OCX 













LOWE THE LABORER; 

OR, 

Seven Years in Eastern Oregon, 

AND 

SEVEN YEARS IN 

THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY. 

THE COMMON SENSE SOLUTION 

OF THE GREAT LABOR PROBLEM. 

By THOS. R. LOWE. 

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: 

OCTOBER, 1877. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-seven, 
by Thos. R Lowe, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



CACHE CREEK, YOLO COUNTY. 



It was on the 15th day of September, A. d. 1857, I met 
with Mr. J. M. Harbin in Sacramento City; of whom four 
days afterwards I purchased a large tract of land on Cache 
Creek, extending down to the Sacramento Eiver in Yolo 
County, Cal., for the sum of seventy thousand dollars. 
Whilst we were looking at the land, Mr. Harbin called my 
attention to the subject of irrigation, and how admirably 
that tract of land was adapted to it, and how easily the 
waters of Cache Creek could be run out on to it. I was 
much pleased with the idea. Some of the reasons for my 
buying so large a tract of land was, I was desperately 
smitten with the natural wealth and beauty of the land; I 
thought it was the most beautiful country on earth. I 
had also heard many of my friends in the mines who had 
families, say, that they would like to find a good country 
in the agricultural districts in which to locate; moreover 
I had formed an exalted opinion of the agricultural wealth 
of California; thought it surpassed all other countries 
nearly as much in agricultural as mineral wealth; but soon 
after making the purchase there was a great excitement 
gotten up, and word was sent abroad that I had purchased 
a large tract of land with a bogus title, and it was but a 
short time until all my acquaintances heard this. Although 
time has proven the report to be utterly without founda- 
tion, in fact it hurt the sale of the land wonderfully; and 
to make matters worse, I believe we had two or three 
successive droughts or seasons so dry, that very poor crops 
were raised. This was the worst streak of luck that I had 
then ever struck; it was almost impossible to sell land. 
During this period I would watch the clouds with the 
greatest anxiety, and welcome every little breeze from the 
south. The ( price of land kept dropping in spite of pro- 
digious efforts on my part to bull the market, as I was 
loaded to the guards with it. 

After letting things run along in this manner for a couple 
of years, I came to the conclusion that watching the clouds 
and praying for rain had ceased to be a virtue, and began 
to think about trying what virtue there was in irrigation. 
I rode up and down Cache Creek several times, from Cache- 
ville to the Canon, and concluded it would be an -easy 
matter to run the water out of Cache Creek through the 
natural channels that headed near the canon. It seems 
the idea of irrigation had entered the heads of nearly 
all the solid men of Cache Creek about the same time. I 
believe it was in the Fall of 1859, that the late Hon. J. A. 



2 



Hutton, the Hoppin Bros., W. G. Hunt, J. T. Daly, S. N 
Mering, Humphrey Cooper, Abram Griffith, Wm. Griffith, 
Mr. Brooks and myself formed a joint stock company, for 
the purpose of constructing an irrigation canal out of 
Cache Creek, on to our lands above and below Cachevilta 
on both sides of the creek. When the snbject of location 
came up, I proposed immediately that we should utilize 
the aforesaid natural channels, by going up to the mouth 
of the canon, and from that neighborhood cut a short 
canal from the creek and turn the waters into the natural 
channels, and it would run from there of its own volition 
to Knights Landing, a distance of about twenty-live miles, 
and running as close to Cacheville as necessary. The 
natural channel I proposed to appropriate for the com- 
pany after reaching within five miles of Cacheville, occu- 
pied the highest ground in the country, except that on the 
bank of Cache Creek. It was in fact a canal made by 
nature, superior to any artificial canal we could construct, 
with the slight defect that it was a little too large for our 
purpose; my proposition received no favor whatever; some 
members of the company said that if we had to to go fifteen 
or twenty miles up the creek to get a starting point they 
wished to be excused. I had very elevated ideas in regard 
to the effect the construction of an irrigation canal would 
have on the price of land. I thought land that was dull 
at eight or ten dollars an acre, would advance to forty or 
fifty ; consequently was more anxious than any one to have 
it completed; and although bitterly opposed to the location 
after being informed by Judge Hutton that under the then 
existing laws a right of way could not be obtained through 
my favorite route, I consented to location as it now stands. 
I was sadly disappointed at the effect the completion of 
this canal had on the price of land. Nobody would use 
the water after the ditch was cut. 

Owing to so many dry seasons and not having my usual 
luck, I turned my attention towards the mines again ; sold 
off large tracts of land at low prices, and invested the pro- 
ceeds in mining operations; intending, however, to keep 
four or five thousand acres around Cacheville and between 
that place and Woodland, and thought when I got to mak- 
ing big money in the mines, I would indulge my passion 
for farming, as I was firmly convinced that there was im- 
mense profit in agriculture whenever good land and moist- 
ure were brought together in proper proportions; but the 
best, laid plans of mice and men, etc., and as fortune had 
failed to smile on my undertaking in the Great Valley of 
California — she really frowned upon me when I went back 
to operating in the mines; and through a combination of 
untoward circumstances, I soon found myself utterly ruined 
financially. 



3 



The strangest part of the whole affair to me, was, why 
irrigation upon which I had had such great expectations, 
had proven so barren of results; for here was the most 
beautiful country on earth with rich alluvial soil ten or 
twelve feet deep, whose only drawback seemed to be lack 
of moisture. Here were large natural channels just about 
the right size for main canals, heading near where Cache 
Creek debouches from the foothills that run out through 
the heart of the country for a distance of fifteen or twenty 
miles on either side. All that had to be done to convert 
those channels into first-class irrigation canals, was to pro- 
cure a right of way through the lands through which they 
run; connect Cache Creek with these by short canals not 
more than one mile in length; thus at a very trifling cost, 
a country embracing about 100,000 acres of land could 
have been supplied with water; but I have been compelled 
to give up my land and ditch property to'pay my liabilities, 
and then did'nt pay them all. Now I could look back 
and see very clearly that in coming to Yolo County I had 
taken hold of the wrong horn of the dilemma entirely, and 
regretted deeply that I had not went after the water 
when I came there, instead of the land, for it was apparent 
to me at that time — when too late — that the water was of 
more value than the land, and I could have appropriated 
all the water for half the money I had paid out for the 
land. Although I had been interested in many paying 
operations since my arrival in the State, I thought at that 
time the best chance for a paying investment I had ever 
seen was laying open there, in appropriating the waters 
of Cache Creek and the natural channels for irrigation 
purposes. 

Notwithstanding irrigation had been tried and found 
wanting, pronounced impracticable and all that sort of 
thing, my own experience and the voice of nature express- 
ed through the aforesaid natural channels to me, that "that 
country was to be irrigated;" but it was useless for me to 
think of doing any thing with them at that time, owing to 
my unfortunate situation. 

About this time (May 1st, 1862), having then been in the 
country about thirteen years, and save in the fall and win- 
ter of '49 and the spring of '50, I had taken very little 
stock in manual labor. I had a strong desire now that I 
was broken in fortune to* go to work, and the Salmon River 
excitement having been raging for six months or so, and 
on the invitation of a friend who was going there with a 
band of h orses, went along with him . We had a delightful 
trip up there through the Webfoot nation; w^e crossed the 
Cascade Mountains about twenty miles south of Mt. Hood, 
on the emigrant road between the Wide Willamette and 



4 



EASTERN OREGON. 

I was astonished after descending to the high dry rolling 
prairies of Eastern Oregon, at the interminable sea of 
bunch grass, tough looking grass, bunches from two to 
three feet apart, looking like a paradise for stock men. 
From the base of the Cascade Mountains to Walla Walla 
Valley a distance of 160 miles, the country maintained the 
same general appearance, with the exception of about 5,000 
acres in Tyghe Valley, and about 10,000 acres on the 
Umatilla Meadows ; there was very little land fit for culti- 
vation between those two points. On arriving in 

WALLA WALLA VALLEY 

en route for Salmon River, we met a lot of California boys 
with whom we were acquainted, returning from the excite- 
ment with such unfavorable reports, that I concluded to 
stop in that valley for a time. 

Walla Walla is one of the most beautifully situate towns 
on the continent, has a delightful climate; the valley is 
unsurpassed for productiveness, being well watered by 
small streams putting in from the Blue Mountains every 
mile or so. I was perfectly delighted with the general 
appearance of things, and thought if I could get into some- 
thing that suited, I would go to work and try and build 
me up a habitation and a home there. My first day in the 
valley I noticed about forty large teams engaged in haul- 
ing fire wood from the nearest point on the Walla Walla 
River where wood could be found, a distance of about 
twelve miles to the town and fort; the river running nearly 
parallel with the road to town for a distance of eight miles. 
The Walla Walla River is peculiar in this, that in the 
mountains it is one stream, and on reaching the valley it 
divides into numerous small streams. I reconnoitered 
the country for a couple of days, and thought I had dis- 
covered a good location for a wood floating enterprise. 
There was a natural channel about the right size in which 
to float wood, putting out of the east branch of the river 
(the branch nearest the town) about two miles below the 
timber, and running parallel with the road for a couple of 
miles to where it passed a very low pass in the foot-hills; 
this pass being the head of a ravine three miles long that 
ran off in the direction of the town and foit, and to get 
through this pass a cutting of only about two feet in depth 
and twenty feet in length was to be made to get water 
into the head of the ravine. My idea was to clear out the 
channel of the east fork up to the timber, turn water 
through the natural channel cut through the aforesaid 
low pass, turn the water into the ravine from whence it 
would run to within four miles of town, and open up water 
transportation for^ wood over half way to the town and 



5 



fort, and go into the wood business strong. I only had 
about thirty dollars to start in with. I knew the aforesaid 
natural channel and the long ravine was the key to this 
enterprise, and about my third day in the valley I bought 
me a pick and shovel and went to work. In the mean- 
time I had located a very level alkaline flat of about one 
hundred acres at the lower end of the aforesaid long ravine 
for a ranch. In about three months after starting in, I 
had the water running through the whole of the works, to 
the utter astonishment of all the natives ; they seemed to 
think I had performed quite a wonderful feat in having 
conveyed quite a large stream of water a distance of five 
miles with my own hands with a pick and shovel, and no 
instrument but my eye to direct me, in so short a time ; 
but what was most astonishing was what I did it for. The 
idea of floating wood in a small ditch was just as pre- 
posperous to them as the idea of sending a message through 
a submarine wire cable, from Europe to America, would 
have been to the average American citizen fifty years ago. 
Here was a factor of vital importance that I had never 
taken into consideration, that is, what those good people 
thought; I had started into an enterprise that would per- 
haps cost $1000 to put it on a paying basis; with thirty 
dollars I had done enough to secure it and thought it would 
be as of old in California, where all I had to do was to 
secure something in which there was great prospective 
profit to be made, and it was always an easy matter to have 
the money put up ; I thought that if I had $500 I could 
complete it for floating wood up to the first timber; but I 
had as well tried to get the people of that valley to haye 
taken stock in a railroad to Alaska, as to invest anything 
in my little enterprise. I dare say if such an enterprise 
had been offered at that time in Virginia City, by a person 
favorably known, for one -half of it it would have been taken 
in three hours. Mr. Bigham one of the shrewdest men in 
the valley and a prominent stockman, told me, that if ever I. 
succeeded in making an enterprise like that a success, that 
I could command him in all things; that he would follow 
wherever I would lead. At that time I had never seen or 
heard of wood being floated in a ditch seven or eight feet 
wide; but I was certain that the matter of practicability re- 
solved itself into two questions, viz : whether water would 
run down hill, and that dry wood would float; but while 
preparing for turning the water, I trimmed up a por- 
tion of the natural channel for a distance of one mile, 
and would|carry sticks of wood and throw them into it; 
after turning the water through, I tried as many as one 
hundred, [and they all went through without lodging; since 
when, I have read in the papers often about people driv- 
ing wood down the Carson Eiver, and hav'nt the slightest 
doubt of its practicability. I could have turned the water 



6 



through the whole of the route in two weeks time, had I 
not taken up so much time in fitting up the one mile afore- 
said, to try the experiment of whether wood could be floated 
in that manner. After trying it and seeing it work so 
nicely, I was satisfied that I could have floated wood to 
Panama providing I had as good a channel all the way. I 
tried my level best on everybody with whom I talked, to 
get them to put up the necessary amount of money, but 
" there was no speculation in their eyes." I worked for 
ranchmen and farmers, and would get them to swap work; 
they using their teams. In this manner I completed about 
one and one-half miles more of ditch, through which wood 
could be floated. 

At that period, I was, perhaps, one of the most hopeful 
and sanguine of the sons of men. I never entertained the 
idea for a moment that it was possible for me to fail in so 
promising an enterprise. Was perfectly satisfied that 
within the near future I would have an enterprise off of 
which I could make ten or fifteen thousand dollars per 
annum, with a chance to get up an occasional " corner" in 
the wood market, off of which I could make a strike. 
There was a large body of waste or desert land that lay off 
to the right of my ditch, and between it and the Blue 
mountains, that appeared almost irreclaimable, to which I 
devoted a vast amount of study, in regard to the best 
means of converting into productive farms. I studied 
every conceivable plan I could think of, and studied how 
I would eventually send wood all the way to the town and 
fort, through my canals, all of which was extremely prac- 
ticable. I intended to beautify and adorn the desert por- 
tion of the country, wherein my canals could reach, to the 
utmost of my ability. And had studied out exactly how to 
do it, as I thought, in the most efficient manner. (But 
there was a small financial problem involving about $1,000 
that seemed to be most difficult to solve. Whilst study- 
ing on this enterprise in all its bearings — floating wood, 
reclaiming land, etc.. the idea occurred to me very forcibly, 
that water could be converted into a much more valuable 
servant to mankind than hitherto had been dreamt of in 
our philosophy. But I was deeply disappointed at my 
lack of financiering ability, but consoled myself with Queen 
Elizabeth's saying, " that the prosperity of a jest depends 
more upon the ear that hears it, than upon the tongue 
that speaks it." I concluded that I would go to the Boise 
mines, and try and make money enough to complete my 
canal, for the purpose of floating wood. And about the 
first of May, 1863 a party of gentlemen came along through 
the valley, going on an excursion to the Boise mines, who 
were greatly in need of some one to go with them who un- 
derstood the management of a train of pack mules. I soon 
made a bargain to go with them. They had plenty of help, 



7 



but none of the men understood lashing the packs on 
securely, and it bid fair to become a great source of an- 
noyance and delay to them. They were much pleased when 
they found out that I was an ' ' expert" at it, and that 
henceforth they were to have no more trouble from that 
source. On arriving in the mines, I got a job the first day 
I was there, for seven dollars a night, for ground sluicing, 
on Bannock Bar, and had steady employment for about a 
month, when the water began to fail. Whilst I was in the 
Boise mines, I noticed where two or three clear headed 
miners had located the waters of a large creek for mining 
purposes. With their own labor, they had cut a large 
ditch, about six feet wide and three feet deep, from the 
creek, for a distance of two or three hundred feet, which 
brought their ditch to the first mining ground; and from 
thence there was rock mining ground ahead of them, for a 
distance of ten or twelve miles, that their ditch would 
cover; and on completing it this short distance, they com- 
menced selling water at a high price. And to extend their 
enterprise through this extensive gold field, all they had 
to do was to make the survey, and the owners of the min- 
ing ground ahead of them willingly completed their work, 
and took their pay in water at cash prices. Thus they 
soon built themselves up a property that paid them twenty- 
five hundred dollars a day. 1 thought that this was one of 
the happiest little enterprises that had ever come under 
my observation, and wondered if I would ever be lucky 
enough to make such a strike, as I was much in need of 
such an enterprise. 

On the breaking out of the Owyhee excitement, I went 
there prospecting around until I had spent all I had made 
at Boise, and went to work for six dollars a day. Started 
down in the fall with only a couple of hundred dollars for 
Walla Walla agaiu. There seemed to be an irresistible 
attraction about the work of cutting canals and handling 
water for me. On the trip down, in company with some 
young men whose acquaintance I had made in the mines, 
I explained my enterprise to them, and as they had all 
been lucky in the mines, they said they would go in with 
me and complete it. They all thought, however, that 
there would be a better chance for an enterprise of that 
kind on the Umatilla river, as there was a new and 
flourishing town (Umatilla) just looming up at the con- 
fluence of the aforesaid river with the Columbia, that bid 
fair to become the most important town in Eastern Oregon, 
as it was virtually the head of navigation of the Columbia, 
and the distributing point for all the freight for the great 
mining country that we were then leaving. They thought 
we might get sale for a great deal of wood to the steam- 
boats plying on the Columbia river, as, at that time, they 



8 



were compelled to boat their wood up from the Dalles, 
and freight it at forty dollars per ton. 

I went with them to the Umatilla, and upon examina- 
tion, we concluded that it was practicable. 

The nearest body of timber on the Umatilla, of any con- 
siderable magnitude was sixteon miles distant from the 
town, by land, — ten miles of the road being heavy sand. 
At twelve dollars per cord teamsters could but make a 
bare living; about all the work we had to do to put our 
enterprise on a paying basis was to cut a canal from out 
the Umatilla river, commencing at the upper end of the 
meadows and running through them a distance of seven 
miles, and then turning the water back into the river, 
from whence there was no obstruction for floating wood to 
town, it being impossible to float wood around the mead- 
ows on account of its devious and winding course. The 
meadows contained about ten thousand acres of land that 
could be irrigated from our canal, and but a small portion 
of this land would produce anything but sage brush with- 
out irrigation. We would only have to cut the canal half 
a mile from the starting point, until we came to farms that 
required irrigation — and barley was worth two or three 
cents per pound. 

We incorporated the Umatilla Canal Co. for the pur- 
pose, amongst other things, of clearing the channel of the 
Umatilla river from the pine forests in the Blue Moun- 
tains, and catting a canal through the meadows for the pur- 
pose of irrigation and floating wood, logs and lumber to 
the town of Umatilla. But before we went to work my 
backers concluded that it would cost more to put the en- 
terprise on a paying basis, than they could raise ; I showed 
them that if they would advance me a thousand dollars 
that in less than one year's time I would have property 
for them that would earn $1200 a month as long as Uma- 
tilla town held up, and at this time it bid fair to continue 
to]be the most important point in Eastern Oregon. But no, 
they were satisfied that it would cost ten thousand dollars 
to cut the canal through the meadows alone. They were 
my friends, and were very reluctant to abandon me; but 
that was a hard country, and prudence, and the advice of 
their friends there compelled them to do it. My backers 
turned the stock of the company all over to me. I went 
to work chopping wood on the meadows for $1.50 a cord 
until I had made a small stake. There were many settlers 
on the meadows who thought they wanted water for irriga- 
tion, but didn't think they were able to construct the 
canal. I examined the route carefully, and found that 
the principal engineering difficulty to overcome, in com- 
pleting the canal for irrigating, was a gravel bar at the 
river, two hundred yards in width, the cutting being seven 
feet in the deepest place, but only averaging two feet and 



9 



nine inches. When that was cut through, two-thirds of 
the work for that purpose was overcome. 1 had money 
enough to buy tools and supplies for sixty days, and con- 
cluded that I would make one more trial — this being my 
third — and see if I couldn't make a success of irrigation; 
I thought I could cut a canal six feet wide, and the neces- 
sary depth through this bar, in sixty days. Shoveling 
cobble stones on a cobble stone bottom is a species of the 
hardest kind of work. It was perfectly terrific; when I 
would quit work for my meals, it was all I could do to 
face the work again. I had read of military commanders 
giving the soldiers, in desperate emergencies, gunpowder 
and whisky; I often thought, on starting in, that I ought 
to have some too. Many of the settlers, after I started in, 
offered to join in with me, and assist in getting the water 
out for water rights; I refused to give them permanent 
rights, but offered to hire them all and pay them in water, 
but failed to make terms with them. At the end of sixty 
days I had finished cutting through the bar, less about 
thirty feet in the deepest of the cutting. My supplies 
giving out, I went to work for the farmers, harvesting, 
and worked all summer. Harvesting seemed to me to be 
nothing but children's play, alongside of working on that 
gravel bar. Late in the Fall of 1864-, a young man, a 
near relation of mine, a stalwart blacksmith, came up from 
Portland to see me; I showed him my canal and offered 
him one-half interest in it if he would go to work and help 
me finish it; to which he agreed. He thought, as I did, 
that when we had incompleted so the farmers could irri- 
gate, it would pay its own way. We went to work, and 
with about three months work each, we had the ditch so 
far completed that water could be sent to all the farms 
on the meadows. But the farmers would not use water 
to amount to anything, would water gardens, but that 
wouldn't pay us anything, and our canal was but a source 
of expense to us. My partner was perfectly disgusted 
with the enterprise, said he would never spend any more 
labor or money on it. It was an unfathomable mys- 
tery to me why people would not irrigate; we came to the 
conclusion that it was lack of enterprise or industry in the 
farmers. This Umatilla Canal was then in the same situa- 
tion as the one at Walla Walla Valley, it needed six or 
seven hundred dollars more expended, so as to make it 
available for floating wood. I worked at harvesting and 
all kinds of farm labor until the next Spring, and some 
new diggings having been discovered on the middle fork 
of John Day's Biver, I was employed by the enterprising 
business men of Umatilla to open a direct trail to that 
point, as the trail then used was a length of about one 
hundred and seventy -five miles, and a direct route could 
be opened with a trail about ninety miles in length. In 



1 



10 

opening up the trail we discovered some new diggings 
on the north fork of 

JOHN DAY'S RIVER, 

brought water on to them, tried ground sluicing, though, 
we could make but two dollars a day each, four of us 
working. One of the party, an old hydraulic miner, yclept 
Texas, said we could make ten dollars a day with a hy- 
draulic, and there seemed to be acres of that kind of 
ground. But two of our bovs wouldn't hear of it; said 
they would have nothing more to do with the claim. But 
Texas was so extremely confident that we could make ten 
dollars a day, that my curiosity was excited to try it; but 
our partners were angry with us when we would try to pre- 
vail on them to try it, and did their level best to dissuade 
us from staying. Finally our partners gave Texas and 
myself a bill of sale of their interests, and we compelled 
them to take all the mouey we had on hand, which they 
were loth to do; but we were confident that we had a 
valuable claim, and tried our best to convince them of it, 
but there was no use in talking, go they would. Texas 
and I went to work, and it was late in the Fall before we 
made enough to buy a hydraulic, but finally did, and as 
soon as we got it in position, made seven or eight dollars 
per day each, with the small stream of water we had. We 
made money enough to lay in our winter's supply before 
the snow got too deep on the mountains that lay between 
us and Umatilla. We worked the claim until it got too 
cold, and then went to work preparing the claim for putting 
about half a dozen more men to work in the Spring; we 
enlarged the ditch, and whip-sawed lumber for a big- 
flume. Then it was I found out what a terrible thing it 
was for two men to be out in the mountains, thirty-five 
miles from civilization, for about three months without 
seeing a human face divine, excepting their own. I re- 
marked to Tex, oftentimes, that I would rather see a 
party of Snake Indians, (then a terror to that country) than 
to be longer alone by ourselves. But that was a hard 
country to make a strike in, and a chance to make ten 
dollars a day was not to be run off from. One day we had 
worked unusually late, and were getting our supper after 
it was quite dark; Texas was grinding coffee ; our cabin, 
made of tamarack bark, was not more than twenty feet 
from the river; I was out at the door andlieard a noise as 
of many horsemen crossing the stream, but so dark one 
could see nothing. Now when white men came there of a 
night, on account of the rough crossing, they invariably 
would sing out for us to bring out a torchlight; I thought 
I understood what the noise meant, and went in and told 
Tex, to get his gun and come out, as there was a party of 
Snake Indians crossing the river after us. Texas swore 



11 



like a pirate and said "d — n 'em, why didn't they wait ntilu 
after supper;" but we jumped around lively, got our guns 
and got out in the willows, within a few feet of where the 
hostiles would come out, and waited for them. The noise 
continued, and we waited, but no Indians came ashore, and 
finally we discovered that an ice gorge had broken loose 
from some place up tne river, and made the noise going 
over the bare boulders in the crossing. When we ascer- 
tained what it was, we breathed more freely. 

When the Spring opened, plenty of men came swarming 
into our camp ; we put on a gang of men, worked our 
claim all summer, never made less than ten dollars to 
hand, and sometimes eighteen dollars. Many old miners 
came along there and said, " Lowe, you've got the best 
claim within five hundred miles of here.*' I enjoyed life 
here very much; it was an inconceivably pretty country 
around there, and there is no more gay or lively place in 
the wide world than a new and paying mining camp. 
Ours, it is true, was the only claim that was paying at 
that time, but there were hundreds of claims that pros- 
pected as well as ours did, and there were many young 
men engaged in getting water on to some of them. It 
cost a mere trifle to get water on to our claim as there was 
a large creek that we turned on to ours in a very few weeks, 
but all the balance of the claims had to cut ditches from 
the river at great expense of time, labor and money. Our 
claim was a high bar granite bed-rock, bed-rock about 
twenty feet above the level of the river. 

During the mining season last mentioned, we worked 
out a cut on the upper end of our claim, about one hundred 
feet square, which paid, I think, about fourteen dollars 
per day to the hand. And on account of the inconvenience 
of working the dirt up stream, late in that season, we con- 
cluded to move our sluices and hydraulic down to the 
lower end of our claim, which was one thousand feet in 
length, and open the claim there, which we did. And be- 
fore the water began to freeze, we worked a cut there 
about twenty-five feet square, it paying us from eighteen 
to thirty dollars per day to the hand. W 7 e thought that 
we had just got our claim fairly opened and prospected, 
and in so doing, it had paid for the building of a wagon 
road from our camp to Camas prairie, from whence there 
was a good wagon road to Umatilla and Walla Walla val- 
ley, a wagon bridge across the river, two or three miles of 
ditches from our creek, to work the high hills above our 
claim, some of them prospecting better than our claim, all 
of which improvements had cost us several thousand dol- 
lars. I next went out and spent the winter at Umatilla, 
and before I got in in the spring, Texas employed a lot 
of hands, and widened out our main ditch that was form- 
erly about two and a half feet wide on the bottom to five 



12 



feet. Put in a big flume three feet wide, and I brought in 
a first class hose that would stand one hundred and twenty 
feet pressure, without straining it. We fitted up our 
claim to work it to the best possible advantage, and now 
expected to reap a golden harvest that would pay us for 
all the privations and hardships we had undergone, con- 
fidently expecting to make on average the summer through 
not less than twenty-five dollars per day to the hand. 
Texas and I had built the wagon road at our own expense. 
There was a flat on the river where we had thrown the 
bridge across, of about two acres, that we had fenced in 
for a town site, running our wagon road through the 
middle of it, expecting to get even on the sale of lots, pro- 
viding the camp proved a success, as that was the only 
point for twenty miles up or down the river, that a wagon 
road could be possibly made; and as there seemed to be 
any quantity of claims, both up and down the river, that 
prospected better than ours, and a great many hardy and 
experienced miners were engaged in bringing water on to 
them ; and I know of a certainty, that provided the claims 
all turned out as well as ours, that there was certain to be 
a great trading point at our place, C£ and where trade is, 
there's a town." 

We had hitherto never tried to create any excitement in 
regard to our camp, but a great many miners from Canyon 
city and the Middle fork had come over and quietly went 
to work for wages in our claim, and satisfied themselves 
that it paid just what we said it did. They would then 
work for us until we could get other hands in their places, 
and quit us and go to work on claims of their own; and 
up to that time, that was the manner in which nearly all 
the miners then on the river, had gotten their introduction. 
But now, as we were fixing up for the second regular 
season, and there were a great many strangers there, some 
of whom looked as though they might have some money, 
I thought I would try and " set them up" a little. We 
employed nine of the best miners on the river for the 
season, to be divided into three shifts of eight hours each. 
They all understood working the claim perfectly. It was 
the calculation for the water never to be shut off, except 
for a " clean up", or on account of Sunday. My calcula- 
tion was to run that claim now not only for the " biggest 
dollar" there was in it, but for " the bubble reputation.' 7 
I wanted to sell one-half dozen, or so, corner lots for a 
thousand dollars apiece. When everything was in readi- 
ness, the water was turned on and worked until noon the 
first day; and the miners concluded that the sluices were 
not in the best shape, concluded to change them, and, of 
course, had to clean up, and in so doing, took out about 
one hundred dollars. That was all right. But what was 
the discomfiture of the miners on the north fork of John 



13 



Day's River, when it was ascertained, for a certainty, that 
that was the last run that claim ever paid expenses. 
Every one was satisfied that as Texas Bar went, so would 
go the river and all the claims thereon. It was well 
Texas had enlarged the ditch, for after working carefully 
for several days, and not finding the lead, we turned on a 
full head of water, and run a cut up through the center of 
the Bar, big enough to run a small sized steamboat, up to 
where we had left off the fall before, thinking, for a cer- 
tainty, that there was good digging around there.- But it 
seems that without knowing it, we had just worked to the 
pay line when we shifted 'it, having paid as well the last 
day as any. There is where I learned what an eflicient 
leveling machine is a stream of twenty cubic feet of water 
per second, aided by a stream of water under one hundred 
and twenty feet pressure, in the inconceivable short time 
our boys were engaged gutting this big claim , at the same 
time stripping it to the bedrock. But so soon as the truth 
was known, stocks were down on the north fork. " Many 
a good tall fellow's hopes for a pile were shattered. There 
were many claims there about ready to open, but they all 
proved failures. 

After this disaster, I came to the conclusion that there 
was no fortune for me in the northern county, and on or 
about the 20th October, 1869, I got aboard of one of Ben 
Holiday's steamers, and sailed out of Portland fot Cali- 
fornia, having made three desperate, but unsuccesful, 
throws for a fortune. 

On arriving in California, I was anxious to know what 
progress had been made in irrigation. I ascertained that 
nearly all the original shareholders of the Cacheville 
Agricultural Ditch Co. had given their stock to Judge 
Hutton, to get rid of paying the assessments . Irrigation 
was pronounced by everybody to be an unmitigated 
humbug. Most intelligent people would listen with 
marked impatience to any argument in favor of it. But I 
had received a dreadful lesson early in the engagement, 
and one that had made a lasting impression upon me. 
I could not but think on my return to California, that the 
business of appropriating and converting these natural 
channels into irrigation canals, was the best speculation in 
the country. But I had no money to do it, and I knew it 
was folly to try to induce any of my acquaintainces on 
Cache creek to put money into such enterprises. I would 
not have it understood that the Cache creek country is 
alone in being favored with natural canals ; nearly the 
whole country is favored in the same manner. 

I made up my mind to take a look through the San 
Joaquin Valley and find the most favorable location in the 
county for an irrigation canal, and take my chances in en- 
listing capital to assist me. My friend, Fred Cox, of the 



14 



firm of Cox & Clark, gave me an order for horses to all 
of their numerous ranches in the San Joaquin Valley, and 
for a vaquero to accompany me if necessary. I went to 
the Paso Robles Springs, and from thence to a rancho of 
my friends on creek, from thence to another rancho of 
theirs on the north end of Tulare Lake, and from thence 
down the " west-side" to Grayson on horseback. I thought 
the ''west-side" was the best field for an irrigation enter- 
prise in California on account of the dryness of the cli- 
mate and the land being uncommonly smooth and level. 
Not so smooth on a level, however, as some lands on the 
south side of Cache Creek in Yolo County. I was travel- 
ing in company with an intelligent gentleman from Solano 
County, and on staying all night at Grayson's we sounded 
the landlord, who seemed to be the proprietor of the town 
site; Mr. Van Schoten, I think was his name, on the sub- 
ject of irrigation. He seemed to think it was not a neces- 
sity in that valley. 1 was satisfied that the west side was 
the best field for irrigation in California, and my travel- 
ing companion pointed out King's River to me as Ave came 
along. And I knew from the ' 'nature of things" that it 
was 100 to 8 that I could find a natural channel from some 
point on King's River leading right directly to the ' 'west 
side.'' I know it to be so from the doctrine of the "Eter- 
nal fitness of things." Although I hadn't been within 70 
miles of upper King's River, I found on arriving there just 
what I expected to find, just what I was looking for 

SEVEN YEARS IN THE GREAT SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY. 

It was about the middle of May, A. d. 1870, that I met 
Geo. W. Marshall, a young friend of mine in Sacramen- 
to City. He told me he wanted to take a trip down the San 
Joaquin Valley to find some government land on which to 
locate. I told him I would go along with him. And on 
Friday, the 20th day of May, we started together from his 
mother's house at Brighton, riding a horse apiece. Had 
one horse packed with the necessary camp equipage. We 
headed quickly for upper King's river. On our road down 
we stopped for about an hour at the large farm of Major 
Redding in the Alabama settlement, near where Borden 
is now located. The Major was a new settler in the val- 
ley but had purchased a large tract of land the fall pre- 
vious, and had in quite a crop, and had a large tract of 
land summer fallowed in the most approved style. He 
seemed to be very enthusiastic on the subject of raising 
grain by that process. Although I had no faith in sum- 
mer fallowing, I thought here is a gentleman who will suc- 
ceed in this manner of farming if their is any such thing 
as success for it. I thought I would sound the Major on 



15 



my hobby of irrigation, and did so very cautiously. He 
gave me to understand that he thought it the champion 
humbug of the period. 

From there we went to King's River in a day or two. 
Found it to be a river after my own heart, all that I could 
ask for. There was a. large natural channel about 100 
feet wide and five or six feet deep, heading close up to 
King's River near where it debouches from the foot-hills, 
and running far out into the centre of the great plain, 
half way to Fresno slough, that slough being the boun- 
dary line between this plain and the " west side." The 
engineering difficulties in getting King's River into this 
slough being very trifling. This slough runs out into the 
plains in the direction where Kingsburg now is on the R. 
R. Neither town or road being heard of then. There 
was another large slough which headed near Black Point 
into which it was an easy matter to get water into out of 
the one first mentioned. I was satisfied that I had found 
the right place. From there I went back up the country, 
and about the 20th of June I met a brother of mine, who 
lives at Woodland, Yolo county, and he looking upon me 
as running around the country doing no good for myself 
or anybody else, he told me he would give $5,000 to make 
a start with and to go to doing something. He charged 
me particularly to go and buy a band of sheep with the 
money and to take them to some place where I could 
get good range on government land, and told me if I 
would do so and stay four or five years that I would 
be "well fixed." So soon as I got the money I went to 
work and got three respectable young gentlemen friends 
of mine to incorporate the King's River and San Joaquin 
Yalley Canal Company. For the purpose, among other 
things, of cutting a canal for irrigation and navigation 
from a point on and out of upper King's River about five 
miles above the town of Centerville in the County 6f 
Fresno via " the west side" to the town of Antioch, in Con- 
tra Costa County. It being, I believe, the first canal in- 
corporated under the now famous law of 1870, in relation 
to canals and ditches. Articles were drawn up by Messrs. 
Daingerfield & Olney, and signed in their office on the 
29th of June, 1870. Capital stock, $1,000,000 ; 5,000 
shares at $200 each. I subscribed for all the shares but 
eleven. The officers of the company taking those. I 
took a contract for cutting the canal from out King's 
River at the starting post to Fresno slough for $5,000 per 
mile, and was appointed business manager of the Com- 
pany, and authorized to locate the route, water rights, and 
to transact all business for the Company. 

I believe it was on the 15th day of July, 1870, that I 
arrived at upper King's River to go to work. I was fully 
aware how necessary it was that I should make a success 



16 



this time, as all of my friends looked upon the enterprise 
with much disfavor, and knowing that I had made three 
unsuccessful attempts before. But in this case I thought 
there was not a location on the globe where so much 
could be done for so little. Here Nature had constructed 
large natural canals, running right into the heart of an im- 
mense desert that I was certain that water could make to 
bloom like the rose, and it was an easy matter to open out 
the head of these sloughs to the river. 

I employed an engineer and located these natural chan- 
nels for canals by running a survey down the middle of 
them; laid claim to water enough of King's Eiver to fill a 
canal 100 feet wide and six feet deep; turned the river out 
of its bed about three-fourths of a mile above where I lo- 
cated the head of the canal. Whilst I was thus engaged 
I heard considerable talk of one 

C. J. MOSES 

that he had bought two-thirds of the Strong ditch, built by 
that enterprising and able ditch man, J. B. Strong, Esq. I 
have heard a great deal of evil report in regard to Mr. 
Moses. Thought from what I heard he was a nice old 
gent to keep a short distance away from, say about 10,- 

000 miles. One afternoon after I had got about through 
locating these natural channels, "I thought I would go over 
to Strong's Mill and spend the evening pleasantly, and 
talk "ditch" to Mr. Strong. But on my arrival at the 
mill, Mr. Moses was there. Mr. Strong gave me an intro- 
duction to him. We hadn't talked more than five min- 
utes until we were in an angry discussion in relation to 
ditch matters. He told me he intended to extend the 
Strong ditch and run it down through certain natural 
channels to the Sink of Fancher Creek. I told him he 
could not do it as I had already located these for canal pur- 
poses for a corporation, which I represented according to 
the law of 1870. He seemed no more to understand this 
language that if I had spoken to him in the language of 
the Tarters. It seemed to utterly defy his comprehension. 
He didn't seem to understand, or have the remotest idea 
what kind of an object a corporation was, whether it was 
animate or inanimate. But finally recovered his temper 
and said : " Why, ar'ent I got Wood's Digest;" and de- 
clared positively that neither corporations nor the* law 
of 1870 were mentioned in it. During the ensuing ten days 

1 received many calls from Mr. Moses. He wanted, as he 
stated, to " come to some understanding." I told him 
that I wanted nothing to do with him or his canal. He 
always wanted, as he termed it, to "jine in with me." 
Finally, he got to bringing his wife and daughters along 
with him. I liked the appearance of the girls very much. 
There were three of them, aged from 12 to 17 years. Af- 



17 



ter he brought the girls along about half a dozen times, I 
began to consider his proposition a little more favorably. 
I thought a man must have some redeeming qualities that 
had such clever girls. The girls used to come over often 
and visit the good looking and intelligent landlady with 
whom I boarded, and I was on very friendly terms with 
them, and whilst my engineer was making up the maps 
of the various routes, I often went to their ranch out on 
the plains and visited them. Stayed sometimes a day or 
two. Finally I made Moses a liberal offer, as I thought. 
I offered to allow him to run the water of the Strong ditch 
through the natural canals on the condition that he pay 
his pro rata of the expense of bridging and other trifling 
expenses, and conditioned further, that he be not allowed 
to sell any water to outsiders, but only to use it on his 
own land. 

Although I had succeeded in making it clear to his 
mighty intellect that I had him fairly ' ' corralled 71 he 
utterly refused these liberal terms. He seemed to have 
an unconquerable desire to set up for a great man on his 
own account, (the only redeeming quality in his composi- 
tion,) and finally, on the 18th day jjof October, 1870, I 
came to the conclusion that profoundly ignorant as Moses 
was there was an immense amount of rebellion and revo- 
lution in him, and might in his desperation get me into a 
world ol trouble, and perhaps cause me to make another 
failure, something I couldn't well afford, and concluded to 
comply with his long cherished wish and let him " jine in 
with me," he giving the King's River and San Joaquin 
Yalley Canal Company a bill of sale of his interest in the 
Strong ditch (f ). I gave him a bill of sale of one-half of 
the stock subscribed for by me on the books of that Com- 
pany. He and I were then equal owners, the control 
being in my friends, the officers of the Company. We 
did'nt want it made public that we had consolidated, for 
the reason that we wanted to quietly buy up a controlling 
interest in the Centerville ditch, and on account of 
Moses's unpopularity we thought better to effect that be- 
fore it leaked out. Consequently we couldn't get the 
deed acknowledged, as the officer before whom it would 
be taken might make it public. 

Moses had no conception of the importance of the posi- 
tion we occupied. As I had located the natural canals, 
and with consolidation we were ready to turn on the water 
and occupy them as soon as we could purchase a right 
of way. And the way we had things located, it was almost 
an engineering impossibility to get water out in opposition 
to us, and we could send it out in quantities to suit, at a 
nominal cost. From long experience in cutting irrigation 
canals, I was of the opinion, that to make a financial suc- 
cess of one, we must not only put ourselves in position to 



18 



send water out in vast quantities, at a nominal cost, but to 
close the door to opposition. The nature of the country 
here, was admirably adapted for such a scheme, and I 
availed myself of the aforesaid natural advantages to the 
utmost. On the line of the canals, after getting through 
the settlements on King's River, there was a strip of land 
open to homestead and preemption, for a distance of six 
miles, and on turning water in these natural channels that 
ran through it, all we would have to do, would be to let it 
be generally known, and we could have it settled in a short 
time, with a desirable class of settlers. 'These people I 
intended to favor in every possible manner in getting out 
branch ditches, and to furnish them with water at such 
rates, that they would look upon the canals as a blessing. 
But I was to have it distinctly understood, that all the 
branch ditches were to belong to my company, it having 
the privilege of enlarging them at will. And as soon as 
we would have the country settled up, and branch ditches 
extending out from either side of our two main canals, 
almost at right angles with them for miles, it would then 
be literally impossible for an opposition canal to get out. 
As each one of these branch ditches would be a fortifica- 
tion against opposition, then we would have an empire in 
front of us, liors du combat At that^time then, there were 
quite a number of settlers located on the Northern or Fan- 
cher Creek route, who wanted water badly, most of them 
intelligent, enterprising people; just the kind of people that 
suited me. I was extremely anxious to get water out for 
them. And on that route, after the natural channel passed 
through the strip of government land above described, it 
ran into a tract of 80,000 acres, belonging to a San Fran- 
cisco Land Association, whose office was in that city. The 
rustees of this Association were, 

Mr. W. B. RODIN, 

Frederick Yon Duining, and another gentleman whose 
name I $id not know. I had heard that Mr. W. S. Rodin, 
one of the trustees aforesaid, one of the most noted land 
operators on the Pacific Coast, of whose ability I had very 
exalted ideas, from many sharp transactions that I had 
heard of his being the hero of, " sharper than a serpent's 
tooth. ' ? But I had heard that this terrible Mr. Rodin 
wanted water on his land badly, and furthermore, that his 
land was situate, much of it, on the northern line of my 
canal. I had heard a great deal of talk and read much of 
the daring operations of Mr. Rodin, although I undoubt- 
edly had great admiration for his ability. I kind of wished 
his land was located in some moister climate. I had heard 
that he had expended a great deal of money in boring an 
artesian well close to my natural canal, that ran out 
through his land, and on his failure of getting water in 



19 



that manner, had employed an able engineer to run a lino 
of levels from a certain point up King's River, and esti- 
mate the cost of an irrigation canal. I understood the 
engineer's estimate was so high from the starting point 
given him, that the project was abandoned. About the 
20th of October, 1810, the maps and filed notes of the 
canal and branches being completed. I started to Sacra- 
mento City to file them in the Secretary of State's Office, 
leaving Mr. Moses in charge on King's River. I went 
through San Francisco, and thought I would call upon the 
trustees of the aforesaid Land Association. Called upon 
Mr. W. Rodin first, and showed him the maps and profile 
maps. Told him we were nearly ready to send the water 
down through the lands of his Association, and wanted to 
know of him how much subsidy in lands his company 
would give us to run the water through their land and at 
the same time, we giving his company the first right to pur- 
chase water on as favorable terms as any other locality no 
further from the base of supplies than theirs. He seemed 
to be a man of quick perceptive faculties, and hadn't 
examined the maps more than fifteen minutes, until he 
turned to me and said, " Lowe you don't look like a man 
capable of comprehending the magnitude and value of the 
enterprise you are handling." Told him I was afraid he 
had guessed me about right. He said he wanted to be in 
with me in the enterprise. That if I would let him in with 
me, he could get us 40,000 acres of land in the way of 
subsidies in a short time. But that he individually was 
not the kind of man that gave subsidies. He told me to 
take a walk round town; not be in a bit of a hurry, but to 
step in in the afternoon, and let him know on what terms 
I would let him have half of the enterprise. I dropped in 
in the afternoon, and told him I would take a township of 
land near where Fresno Station is now located, six miles 
square. Mr. Rodin said that would never do. That I 
had gone up to Fresno, spent ten or twelve hundred dol- 
lars, and now asked him one hundred and ten thousand 
dollars for one-half interest. Before I left, I believe he 
offered to give me a right of way, providing I would agree 
to run the water through the lands of the Association per- 
manently. Told him I wouldn't do it, but if his company 
would give me 10,000 acres of land, and a right of way, I 
would go home and send the water down immediately. He 
gave me no definite answer to this proposition, but said as 
I was leaving, " That the time would come when I would 
be sorry I didn't let him in with me." I then called on 
Mr. Frederick Yon Dw3ming, another of the trustees. He 
told me that he had left the matter in the hands of Mr. 
Rodin entirely. I called upon several other large land 
holders, but found out that Mr. Rodin had been there 
ahead of me, and they were all waiting there to see what 



20 



lie would do in the premises. They all wanted water 
badly, they thought, but I had run water out on to Uma- 
tilla Meadows, to people who thought they wanted water, 
and intended that these landholders should make me know 
they wanted water before they got any. 

I went back to King's River, and went to work in earnest 
to procure a right of way. It was not until sometime in 
the month of January, 1871, that 1 could procure a right 
of way through to the head of Fancher Creek on the north- 
ern route. And to complete that I had to purchase the 
land a distance of one mile in length, and one-half mile in 
width through the low pass in the foot hills between King's 
River, and the head of Fancher Creek. I had purchased 
land on the same route previously, and then owned it for 
a distance of one mile, thus making two miles of owner- 
ship for the Canal Company, on the route of the survey. 

WM. ARNOLD, 

There had been a young man in my employ nearly ever 
since I had commenced locating the canals, who was an 
old settler on King's River, by the name of Wm. Arnold, 
in whom I had implicit confidence. Whenever there was 
anything of importance to be done, that I couldn't give my 
personal attention, he always took charge of it. He seemed 
to take as much interest in the success of my enterprise, 
as I did. He seemed to be the only person in that part of 
the country who had any conception of the magnitude of 
the enterprise, and the tremendous engine I would control 
providing I could make everything work as I wanted to. 
He had been of great service to me, and I promised him 
that if I succeeded in my undertaking, I would give him, 
in addition to the small wages I was paying him, five per 
cent of the profits. He seemed to have great natural 
ability for the work in hand. I never made a movement 
without consulting diligently with him, and always 
received important suggestions from him. After I had 
purchased the last link in getting a right of way, Mr. W. 
C. Caldwell and the balance of the shareholders of the 
Centreville Ditch Company, with great kindness, told me 
that I might turn the Strong Ditch water into the Cen- 
treville Ditch, and it run down through their channel as far 
as necessary, and then turn it out together with all the 
surplus water of their canal, they not using one-tenth of 
the capacity of it. This was a stroke of good fortune 
entirely unlooked for, and a kindness, that I felt under a 
mountain of obligations for. With this great advantage, 
it would cost us but a trifle, now that we had a right of 
way, all the way to get the water through on the northern 
route, down near to where Fresno Station now is, a dis- 
tance of 20 miles or so. The first thing to be done, was 
to cut a canal from the Centerville Ditch a few hundred 



21 



yards to our main natural canal; let the water run down 
that channel for a distance of a half a mile or so; then 
build a levee, about six feet high across said channel, and 
some other trifling work in the shape of cuts and levees, 
which would force the water through the aforesaid low 
pass in the foothills, to the head of Fancher Creek, from 
whence it would run through that natural channel to the 
center of an immense desert of 600,000 acres of land. 
Mr. Moses, Mr. Arnold and myself, held a consultation in 
regard to this work. The work to be done was all on 
lands belonging to the company, except the canal from the 
Centreville Ditch to the natural channel. 

Finally Mr. Arnold proposed, if I w r ould let him have 
the use of a large plow I had bought for ditching purposes, 
he would do the work above described for $312, to which 
Mr. Moses and I agreed. Mr. Moses agreed to have the 
money ready for the work as it progressed, as I had 
advanced the money for the right of w T ay, and he was now 
to pay up everything, until he was even with me. About 
this time or soon thereafter, Mr. Arnold began to be sus- 
cious of Mr. Moses, and told me he thought Moses was in- 
trigueing with parties below. And in a day or so, I re- 
ceived a letter from Mr. W. S. Eodin, in relation to canal 
matters, on the margin of which was written these ominous 
words, "Don't show this letter to Lowe." It looked to 
me that Mr. W. S. Eodin had been writing to Mr. Moses 
and myself the same day, and had put these words on 
the wrong letter. But I couldn't see wherein Mr. Moses 
could be dangerous, as he had no authority to act for the 
company. 

About the time Wm, Arnold had completed the work for 
the canal, necessary to be done on the lands belonging to 
the Company, Mr. W. S. Eodin of San Francisco, and 
Capt. A. Y. Fairface of Ban Andreas, who also owned a 
large tract of land through which the northern line of my 
canal was to run through, put in their appearance. The 
Captain was reported to be a man of great wealth and 
high social standing. It seems that Mr. Moses, in bis 
younger clays, had been a body-servant to the Captain, 
and thought a great deal of him. They seemed to be Mr. 
Moses 5 guests, and he was showing them around for a day 
or so. I saw r but very little of them. 1 believe they all 
stopped one night at the house of Wm. Arnold. I met 
Eodin a time or two wdiilst he was up, but he didn't ap- 
pear to be communicative. Soon after Capt. Fairface and 
Mr. Eodin left, I went out to where Wm. Arnold was at 
work on the canal. He seemed to be very angry. He 
said he had found out what I had been saying about him, 
and how I intended to treat him as soon as I got through 
using him. That he had found it out through Moses. He 
reminded me of how faithfully he had served me and 



22 



watched my interests. I told him that some of these 
old persons had been putting up a job on us; that such 
ideas and language as he had imputed to me, had never 
entered my head. But he seemed to be irreconcilable.; 
said that circumstances pointed out plainly that what he 
heard was true, and that henceforth he would be just as 
bitter against my interests as he had formerly been for 
me. And that Mr. Moses had sold, or was, about closing 
a trade with Messrs. Rodin, Oapt. Fairface and others, 
for a sale of three-fourths interest in the canal, and that 
he had entered into a written contract for the building of 
the canal for Mr. Moses, individually. (The same work 
that he had verbally contracted with Mr. Moses and my- 
self to do, for our corporation, and three-fourths of the 
work then had been performed) and that I, or the corpo- 
ration I represented, was not known in this transaction. 
Here now was a complication. I could not consistently 
stop this work, as there were a great many settlers out a 
few miles on the line of the canal, to whom I had 
promised water as soon as possible, and they were, on ac- 
count of previous dry winter, threatened with the total 
loss of their crops. I knew these conspirators could do 
nothing to prejudice my title to the property, for I believed 
Wm. Arnold to be an honest man, and that just as soon 
as he found out how he had been imposed upon, that he 
would indignantly quit the service of Rodin, Moses & Co. 
But I was very much provoked at him for allowing himself 
to be duped in that manner, by three or four abandoned 
and rascally old men. But he was as good as his word, 
for as he had hitherto not left a stone unturned to assist 
my cause, he was now equally active and vigilant to do 
everything in his power to overthrow me. He knew all 
my plans as well as I did. Knew, to a dollar, what money 
I had. And so soon as he completed his contract, un- 
ceremoniously turned the possession of the property over 
to Mr. Moses and his pals, who immediately incorporated 
a new company, styled The Fresno Land and Irrigation 
Co. The trustees of this new company were W. S. Rodin 
and Frederick Yon Dwining of San Francisco, Capt. A. Y. 
Fairface of San Andreas, Chas. J. Moses, and Robert 
Wells of Fresno Co., this company taking a deed from 
Mr. Moses of the Strongditch and the line of canal just 
about completed by Wm. Arnold, for my company. Mr. 
Moses, as it has been seen, having previously conveyed all 
his interests in canals, ditches, water rights and right of 
way, to my company, of which facts Capt. Fairface and 
Mr. Rodin had personal notice. These shrewd gentlemen, 
as I have been reliably informed, went to San Francisco 
and represented that they were the owners of this prop- 
erty, and received a subsidy of $40,000 from the Land Co. 
heretofore referred to, that I had asked ten thousand acres 



23 



of land for the same purpose. As soon as the Fresno 
Land and Irrigation Co. got possession of this property, 
and everthing completed that Wm. Arnold had contracted 
to perform, they sent the water through the whole of the 
works — through natural and artificial channels, for a dis- 
tance of about twenty miles, and advertised it widely 
through the press of the country, what a mighty feat had 
been accomplished. The newspapers were loud in their 
praises of C. J. Moses — what a great man he was; and if 
Fresno County only had a few more men like C. J. Moses, 
what wonderful things could be accomplished. Mr. Kodin 
seemed now to be as much infatuated with the irrigation 
canal business, as I had everbeen. He and a number of 
other San Francisco capitalists, incorporated an immense 
company, capital stock, I believe, ten millions of dollars, to 
cut canals from nearly all the rivers in the valley, and to 
run a main canal from the San Joaquin River and Tulare 
Lake, for irrigation and navigation to Antioch. Mr. 
Rodin had evidently gotten a " point. 1 ' It seemed to me 
he not only iutended to appropriate my property, but my 
ideas also. He seemed to entirely overlook the important 
feature of location. He had seen, on King's River, a 
large stream of water run out twenty miles into a plain, 
for less than $2,000, and seemed to think it didn't cost any- 
thing to cut irrigation canals anyway . They went to work 
in one locality, and expended, so they say, five hundred 
thousand dollars, and only succeeded in getting water out 
forty miles; and from that day to this, its running ex- 
penses has had to be kept up by assessments. He and 
one of his pals are said to have spent two or three hundred 
thousand dollars to another locality, with the same re- 
sult. 

Moral. " Irrigation is a something that the American 
people know very little about;" but as Capt. Mace says, 
" they'll learn;" and it appears from the foregoing results, 
that it is well in appropriating the idea of another; to know 
the whole history of that idea before spending seven or 
eight hundred thousand dollars upon it. Ah! if these 
shrewd and wealthy capitalists had only sent an agent 
around on my track, first to Cache Creek, thence to Walla 
Walla Valley, and from thence to Umatilla, and enquired 
of all the denizen of those different localities, and found 
out that I had lost my bottom dollar at each and every 
throw, they might not now in their old days be wading in 
bankruptcy up to their eyes. 11 But such is life!" 

But the fact of the business is, there is no subject more 
calculated to deceive intelligent people than this same sub- 
ject of irrigation. I say this after following it up for 
eighteen years and gambling off every dollar I could get 
hold of in the pursuit of it. It is worse than three card monte 
to a verdant emigrant. It reminds me of an incident that 



24 



occurred about a quarter of a century ago. At that time I 
was engaged in the very lucrative business of driving stock 
from Missouri to California; and on that occasion I had 
sent my band of cattle and horses by land in charge of a 
little flaxen -haired, gray-eyed Dutchman, about nineteen 
years of age, by the name of Hermann, (quite a stripling to 
send in charge of four hundred head of cattle, forty horses 
and fifteen or twenty men; but this boy had half a dozen 
or so cardinal qualities: he was honest, intelligent, ex- 
tremely thoughtful, and withal brave and audacious, so 
there was no uneasiness on his account; but on his way 
up, unfortunately, got his leg broken in crossing the Mis- 
souri river on a ferry-boat, and had to go back to St. Louis. 
1 have never seen him since, but have thought of him a 
"thousand heavy times," and how I would like to have had 
him with me.) 

I was going up the Missouri river on the steamer Timour 
with the outfit and about a dozen more young men to meet 
Hermann, who had instructions to go to old Ft. Kearny 
with the stock. I had'nt been on the boat long, until I 
noticed a couple of "Boosters" playing what is called 
three card monte. I called my young men together as 
soon as I could and pointed out these gamesters to them, 
and told them I did'nt want to hear of any of them loosing 
a cent at it, and explained to them that it was one hundred 
per cent, worse than stealing, and also that it would be 
very humiliating to me to know that I had a man along 
with me so verdant as to bite at any such a stale device. 
They all promised to do no more than look on; but one of 

the boys, Sandy thought he was a little sharper than 

the others, watched the game closely; finally thought he 
had caught a " point 7 ' — saw a spot on one of the cards I 
guess, and bet twenty dollars; of course the gamblers 
raked it in. Some of the boys came laughingly to me and 
told me what had happened Sandy. The next time I got 
within speaking distance of Mr. Sandy, I told him I was 
very much provoked at his conduct, and asked him why he 
had so disregarded my advice. He said he thought he 
ought to believe his own eyes before he would the word of 
anyone. 

Now that is very much the way it is with this irrigation 
business. When Mr. W. S. Eodin came up to Centreville 
in 1871 to meet his "pardner," Mr. Moses, he saw corn and 
oats growing in Mr. W. C. Caldwells garden in the greatest 
luxuriance, caused by irrigation. He thought he had dis- 
covered a point. Now the clever gentleman that owned 
the aforesaid garden kept a large hotel with many borders, 
and was a man that would have whatever he wanted, at 
any price; consequently he kept as many Chinamen at work 
in that garden as was necessary, regardless of cost. Now 
if any person should have told Mr. Rodin after his look- 



25 



ing at Mr. Caldwell's garden that dry season, and seeing 
everything growing so luxuriously, that irrigation in the 
ordinary acception of the term was a failure, doubtless he 
would have exclaimed with my man Sandy — " will I not 
believe my own eyes before any man's word," and so he 
went forth and was slain. 

After these patriots had wrested my property from me, 
I went to San Francisco and staid there about a year, try- 
ing to enlist capitalists in my behalf, to get my property 
out of their hands; but it seemed almost impossible to find 
a capitalist with the nerve to tackle this formidable array 
of capital and skill that was combined against me, and 
Capt. Fairface was a man of such high standing, that capital- 
ists who knew him, insinuated, that it was very singular 
that he should embark in so questionable an enterprise. 
They all seemed to think that Messrs. Rodin & Moses were 

a brace of , but it seemed impossible to counteract 

the powerful influence of Capt. Fairface, and all the peo- 
ple from San Andreas that I interviewed in regard to him, 
spoke in the highest terms of him. I was nearly at my 
wits end to know what course to pursue. 

During the whole period from the time I had lost pos- 
session of the above described property up to the last 
mentioned, which was about eighteen months, I had been 
engaged diligently studying the situation in regard to this 
land and water business, and where the greatest profit was 
to be found in it, and made up my mind that it was to be 
made in the scientific use of it; and the idea occurred to 
me, and I acted upon it immediately. To incorporate a 
new company, styled the Co-operative Canal and Agricul- 
tural Company, for purposes among other things of pur- 
chasing, owning, constructing and operating canals and 
ditches; to engage in 'diversified farming, buying, selling 
and owning live stock, etc. Turned over nearly all the 
property of the King's River and San Joaquin Valley Canal 
Company and my private property, to this new Corpora- 
tion. One hundred thousand shares placed at ten dollars 
per share, one-half of the shares to be sold for working 
capital; sent about fifteen hundred shares to San Fran- 
cisco for sale, to a young man of good character and address, 
who once worked in the hydraulic claim on John Day's 
River, for Texas and myself, by the name of Billy Milli- 
gan, with orders to sell at $1.25 per share. He knocked 
around amongst the industrial and laboring classes and 
commenced selling in small lots of twenty and fifty shares 
in a block. He had succeeded in getting up quite a little 
excitement. I sent him circulars and he was getting along 
swimmingly, but Mr. Rodin who kept himself well posted 
all the time in regard to my movements, and it seems to 
me that I had furnished him with another " point," for it 
was but the shortest imaginable time until he and his as- 



26 



sociates were on the market with their five hundred thou- 
sand dollar elephant to unload it in the same manner. Now t 
I have read it or heard some one say, that to be imitated 
is a very high compliment, and I must confess that this 
company of bloated San Francisco capitalists before refer- 
red to as S & Co. caused me to feel quite flattered 

in that way several times. The names of their company 
corresponded nearly with mine, the termini nearly the 
same, objects nearly the same; and to cap the climax, when 
I embraced the co-operative plan, behold they w r ere ready 
to follow the same plan, and best of all, was, they used 
some of the identical language of my circulars in theirs. 

While I knew this last effort of theirs would break the 
market for all canal stock, I could not but feel somewhat 
flattered; but they showed their over anxiety to unload 
too plainly, and it stopped the sale of canal stock altogether. 
Although that company failed to unload any portion of 
their elephant, it was a great success in one important 
point to some of the principal stockholders, and that was, 
it "snuffed out " my little enterprise, for they well knew 
that all I wanted to make them take their heel off of me on 
King's River, was monev to hire honest and able counsel, 
and they would have as leave seen the Devil come, as to 
see me in that shape. They knew in that event they would 
be compelled to pay for all the crimes they had committed 
upon me, and the way the thing was, those people had 
appropriated the honor of having first inaugurated irriga- 
tion in the San Joaquin Valley, and Mr. Rodin had the 
unparalled mendacity to allow it to emanate from him in 
a letter or speech, I do not recollect which, but I saw it 
in print. It was expressed substantiatly as follows : that 
if there was a man in California that had done more for 
irrigation than he had, he would like to see him. Now 
from my standpoint he and his co-conspirators in wresting 
my property from me, really struck down irrigation, for 
the very simple reason that at that time I had followed and 
studied irrigation for about ten years or more, and would 
have soon inaugurated a perfect system of irrigation, and 
until that is done, irrigation with the exception of one or 
two favored locations, is a failure; and that there was not a 
man in California that had done so much to impede irriga- 
tion as this same W. S. Rodin. These capitalists little 
knew the fear and anxiety I felt with all my former failures 
in making a financial success of an irrigation canal, even 
on King's River, the most favorable location on the conti- 
nent for an enterprise of this kind. What I depended 
upon chiefly was to invent a plan for preparing land so as 
to make irrigation practicable and a success; I had followed 
it up long enough to know that without such invention 
the irrigation ditches would'nt pay expenses; and experi- 



27 



ence has taught Rodin and his friends that to their great 
sorrow. 

Now when the water was turned through the works, 
settlers of a very desirable character came flocking in, and 
settled upon most of the government lands hitherto de- 
scribed, but on finding the water question sunk into 
fathomless depths of law, procured titles to their lands, 
and sold out to sheep ranchers and speculators, and left 
the country; and that valuable canal property has wasted 
itself in the barren sands of the desert, and been no 
profit to anyone, perhaps not more than six hundred and 
forty acres of land having been irrigated from it, until 
within the last year or so; until the very questionable use 
some parties have been making of it in selling twenty 
acre lots with water rights, to inexperienced persons, on 
the colony plan, calling them, with bitter irony, "home- 
steads with an income." 

In the location of my main canal, the head of it or the 
point where it left the river was about a mile or so above 
the headgate of the Centreville and the Strong ditches, 
and a part of the conspiracy Wm. Arnold, in his zeal in 
helping the new regime, induced a lot of settlers on King's 
River to jump my location, so as to leave me no founda- 
tion to stand on whatever, and to inextricably complicate 
my affairs. These settlers not thinking their title very 
good, most of them sold out to parties in San Francisco, 
Mr. Moses assisting in changing the ownership all he 
could, as he thought it to his interest to get as much capi- 
tal enlisted against me as he could. The parties that pur- 
chased this location of mine from what is known as the 
Settler's Ditch Company, owned large tracts of land out 
in the great plain hitherto referred to, and had formed a 
company for the purpose of getting water, and to get out 
to the plains with this water they had to run through the 
aforesaid low pass in the foot-hills, the land through the 
whole of which belonged to my company, and had been 
located by it for a reservoir, thus completely blocking up 
the pass. This corporation, through its officers, applied 
to me for a right of way through the pass ; I refused to 
let them go through on their terms, I told ihem that the 
greater portion of their canal was on my location, and 
that I intended to contest the right to their whole property 
with them, They commenced suit against the company 
represented by me, for a right of way through this pass, 
and to quiet the title to the other portions of their prop- 
erty. 

LAWYER SANPETE. 

I had heard Mr. Sanpete of Merced, spoken highly of 
as a lawyer, and went to him with all my papers, told him 
the situation, as nearly as I could, that I had the control 



28 



of property of immense value, but that I was broke, and 
didn't know exactly what to do, but if I could get him to 
take hold of it and see it through, I would give him a 
large interest in the property. It took me considerable 
time to give him a history of the whole affair in all its 
bearings; he said it was one of the most outrageous con- 
spiracies that he had ever had anything to do with. I 
made a bargain with him then and there, to give him a 
large interest in the property, which we finally settled 
upon should be two-fifths of the whole property belonging 
to the corporations represented by me, on King's River in 
Fresno County; he agreeing to attend to any and all law- 
suits wherein the title to any of this property was brought 
in question, and to commence and carry through any 
suits to recover possession of any of the property, and I 
was to be the judge when such suits were necessary. He 
said it was a very complicated affair, and would bring up 
nearly all questions known to the law ; that he would 
study the case thoroughly and go to the bottom of it. I 
was of the opinion, from his personal appearance, and 
from what I had heard of him, that he was an able lawyer; 
that was the only kind that would be of any use to me, as 
the Settler's Ditch Company had gone into the hands of 
many wealthy men of San Francisco, an immense amount 
of capital was massed against me. I felt it deeply to the 
very bottom of my soul that it was of more importance 
that I should defeat this wicked and unholy conspiracy 
that had been formed against me, than a thousand lives 
like mine were worth. It appeared to me that if these 
men were allowed to trample over me in this shameful 
manner that henceforth there would be no use for a poor 
man to look for anything of value, for rogues would find 
out and become skillful, and cultivate the arts that had 
been employed against me so successfully. That in the 
future, mendacity, audacity, treachery and low cunning 
would be made to triumph over skilled labor, experience 
and enterprise. Whenever I would allow myself to con- 
template this subject in all its deformity, I was made to 
suffer the tortures of the damned; and as anxious as I was 
to demonstrate what great and inconceivable results could 
be obtained by the judicious use of water in agriculture, 
and thereby to show my friends and the country in gen- 
eral, some reason for the faith I had exhibited in following 
up water so closely. I ^thought it of more importance 
that I should come out victorious in this contest with 
these conspirators, albeit I should come out penniless in 
the end and be unable to show what I could do. 

I left Mr. Sampete and felt, very hopeful that now I had 
secured the services of a first class lawyer and given him 
such a large interest in the enterprise, that I thought he 
would do his level best, and I was confident that I was so 



29 



clearly and plainly in the right that it would be impossible 
for me to come out otherwise than triumphant* I went 
back to Centerville much elated. * * * *• * * * 

In due time Mr. Sanpete put in a demurrer to the 
complaint of " The Settlers' Company,'' and on the com- 
ing on of the case to be heard in the February Term, of 
the District Court, the demurrer was sustained; that com- 
pany amended their complaint, and I believe the next 
term of the court the case went over for the term, as I 
did not arrive at the court house until a few hours after 
the case was called. On my arrival I was informed that 
the distinguished lawyer for the Settlers' Company, the 
Honorable Geo. Smith of Santa Clara and Mr. Sanpete, 
had concluded a compromise of our suit subject to my 
approval; and on the term being made known to me, I 
refused to give my consent, as I. thought it an absurd 
arrangement; as I had affidavits from some of the original 
officers of the Settlers' Company, stating that they had 
constructed three or four hundred yards of the upper end 
of their canal on my location. That they had done it 
with notice; that I had forbidden them from working on 
it, and that much of the body of their canal was on my 
location; and it was nearly an engineering impossibility for 
them to get out to the plains with their water without first 
obtaining a right of way through the lands owned and loca- 
ted by company for a reservoir. And as these lands were 
already located for a public use, they couldn't be con- 
demned. We had a warm discussion in the room of the 
Board of Supervisors, many of the county officers being 
in the room and were listening to the conversation; Mr. 
Sanpete seemed very much provoked at me because I 
wouldn't accept of the compromise he had arranged. But 
I thought the terms were too humiliating to accept; the 
Honorable Geo. Smith was also very much displeased with 
my exhibition of stubbornness, told me I didn't know 
enough to know when I was offered a good thing, at which 
I laughed heartily at him. I said to him, ' 'let's go into 
court and try the case". He said, " Oh yes, you have 
spent two or three hundred dollars in this affair, and we 
have spent forty thousand; now you want to put the prop- 
erty up and gamble for it." I didn't pretend to deny the 
soft impeachment; but said to him, "in case they were not 
willing to compromise on reasonable terms, that it would 
be tried some day." 

Sometime after this I met one of the members of the 
Board of Supervisors, who had been present and listened 
to the dicussion of this compromise. He asked me why I 
didn't have a lawyer; I told him I had, that Mr. Sanpete 
was my lawyer, at which he expressed astonishment; he 
said he thought that gentleman represented the other side. 

Now although Messrs. Moses, Rodin & Co had been 



30 



chiefly instrumental in getting up this Settlers' Ditch 
Co. to oppose me, they began to find out that my ideas 
were perfectly correct, in not wanting an opposition canal 
to run out into the plains, and had found out that they had 
conjured up something that was about to return to plague 
the inventors. They were the instigators of all this rebel- 
lious conduct, on the part of the Settlers' Co. ; without 
their influence, the settler never would have thought of it; 
and before the suit between the Settlers' Company and the 
Company represented by me, came on for trial again, the 
Fresno Land and Irrigation Co. (the Moses, Rodin Co.) 
commenced suit against the Settlers' Co. The company 
represented by me,. and a large number of other defend- 
ants laying claim to nearly everything in the shape of 
canals, ditches and water rights on our side of King's 
River, including all canals, ditches and water rights 
owned by my Company. 

Now was when I had use for my first-class lawyer; with 
a lawyer answering that description, and to get two men 
to swear to the truth, Wm. Arnold and Robt. Wells, I 
knew that I had a sure thing of regaining for my Company 
all the ditch property on the north side of King's River of 
much importance. 

And in regard to Wm. Arnold he turned out just as I 
predicted. He continued in the service of Rodin, Moses 
& Co. until he satisfied himself that what they had told 
him, in regard to what I should have said about him, was 
a tissue of falsehoods made of whole cloth, and very 
abruptly quit their service, and regretted deeply what he 
done, as he was perfectly aware that only through him 
could my enemies possibly have gotton peaceable possess- 
ion of my property. And now he was more anxious 
than to ever reinstate me, but ******** 
Consequently I did not feel very well prepared under the then 
existing circumstances to risk a general engagement for so 
large an amount of property (estimated by some prominent 
men at five hundred thousand dollars), but consoled my- 
self with the idea that there was now to be an end to this 
everlasting suspense and anxiety, that had been weighing 
so heavily upon me for three or four years, and determined 
to meet my fate boldly, come what may. I made a verbal 
arrangement with the officers of the Settlers' Co. to "coal- 
esce," and make common cause against the Rodin, Moses 
& Co., and let our suit go over until he had a decision in 
the other case, the Settlers' Co. telling me to have any wit- 
nesses I wanted summoned, and they would furnish the 
funds, which they did greatly to my advantage. Mr. 
Chas. Howard, Mr. Sanpete's law partner, quite a young 
gentleman, came up and with my assitance put in the 
answer for my Company, and when the cause came up for 
trial at the February Term of the District Court for 1874, 



31 



I believe it was, it appeared that I had things pretty well 
arranged for getting my property back. 

In this legal contest it seemed as tho' I had everything 
at stake, and if ever then there was a time in my life that 
I should exert myself, it was then. Not only my own 
fortune and reputation was at stake, but my friend. Billy 
Milligan, who had sold stock in the Co-Operative 
Canal Company to his friends by assuring them that he 
knew me to be a safe operator and an honest man. And 
of course his reputation was up on the issue, although 
he was only a clerk on Hathaway's wharf, I knew he val- 
ued his reputation as much as though he was a United 
States Senator. It was not probable that I could ever 
again meet my opponents so well prepared if I did not 
make the best possible showing this time. And again I 
was anxious to make the best showing possible on ac- 
count of the moral effect it would have on my powerful 
ally, the Settler's Company, with whom it was necessary for 
me to make a favorable compromise. Many people dur- 
ing the long three or four years just preceeding, when I 
was loaded with care and anxiety in regard to the matter 
at issue, would intimate to me that it was ridiculous for a 
poor man like me to contend against such a powerful and 
unscrupulous ring of capitalists, and that they would 
worry me out of the property in the end tho' my title be 

ever so good. I thought, and doubtless said : "D n 

these capitalists," I've got just as good a right before the 
law as they have. But have since had reason to change 
my mind somewhat in that particular. 

The trial lasted four days. Judge Fielden, before 
whom, without a jury, we were trying the case, was in 
very bad health. All parties seemed to he represented by 
able counsel, Messrs. Sanpete & Howard, appearing for 
me. The Judge was anxious to dispose of the case as 
soon as possible, and brought us into court at 9 or 10 
o'clock in the morning, and continued without intermis- 
sion, except for our meals, until 10 or 12 o'clock at night. 
The first day was principally occupied by the Court in re- 
ceiving the documentary evidence. Late in the evening 
of the first day a shrewd and intelligent friend [of mine, 
who had been watching the proceedings, and one withal 
who knew more about my affairs than any man in the 
State, came to me and congratulated me on the fine pros- 
pects I had of getting justice at last, and complimented 
me highly on my good management in having everything 
so well provided for. I felt as tho' my friend didn't see 
things as I did, or he would have indulged in no such re- 
marks. But thought I wouldn't say anything to dampen 
his feelings. 1 said, yes. I intended to have Rodin and 
Old Moses with a hand organ and monkey apiece in less 
than a year grinding out a living in San Francisco. I 



32 



was pretty certain that Mr. Sanpete had never given any 
study to the legal complications in my case, and without 
that I didn't think any lawyer could do the case justice. 
As to the most important question, that in regard to the 
ownership of the main canal from the Centerville ditch 
through the land purchased by the company from Mr. J. 

A. V , and located by said Company for a reservoir 

through to Black Point, the head of Fancher Creek, which 
has heretofore been particularly referred to, in which Mr. 
Moses and myself had made a verbal contract with Mr. 
Arnold to do the work for $312 for the Company represent- 
ed by me, and on the completion of the work both of them 
claimed that the work was done under a written contract 
with Mr. Moses, and for him individually. I did not 
think that Mr. Sanpete had given a thought to this com- 
plicated question, and it seemed impossible to make Mr. 
Howard comprehend it. As I would never have enter- 
tertained the idea for a moment of employing so young 
and inexperienced a lawyer to unravel and explain such 
a complication. Mr. Sanpete didn't seem to give himself 
any uneasiness about the matter, however, and appeared 
to think he could find out enough as he went along, pro- 
viding always he might want to find out anything about it. 

On the morning of the second day of the trial I saw Mr. 
Howard^ and the Hon. George Smith (of counsel for the 
Settler's Company), walking towards the court house, and 
joined them; Mr. Howard informed me that Mr. Sanpete 
had received a sudden call from Merced and had ' 'left on 
the morning train," and would not return during the trial; 
at which I was distressed but happily not much disap- 
appointed. I told Mr. Howaid that he ought, by all means 
to employ other counsel to assist him, and the Hon. Geo. 
Smith spoke up and said he would "stand in, " and did 
do yeoman service in my cause; but his hands were too 
full of his own case to give the attention to mine that it 
required. He understood a great deal about my case, had 
been compelled, in preparing his own, to inquire into 
mine; but as to the important question above referred to, 
I didn't think that distinguished lawyer knew anything of 
the complications attending it, and in the course of the 
trial it was developed he did not; but I had paid for a first- 
class lawyer (afterwards did pay) of my own, and was un- 
doubtedly entitled to his services; but he failed to con- 
nect. Early in the engagement, on the second day of the 
trial, the plaintiff's allegation in relation to the matter 
of the Strong ditch being before the court, the plaintiff 
trying to make it appear that Mr. Moses had been de- 
frauded out of it, and that that innocent old gentleman 
had received no consideration whatever therefor, Mr. 
Moses being on the stand, the Hon. Geo. Smith went for 
him vigorously to make him acknowledge that I had given 



33 



him a bill of sale of a large number of shares of the King's 
River and San Joaquin Valley Canal Company therefor; 
Mr. Moses' memory was so much at fault he couldn't bring, 
it to mind that I had ever given him anything, important , 
matter that it was, but finally said that Mr. Lowe might 
have given him some kind of a paper, but that if he had k 
ever given him a bill of sale of a number of ' 'sheers" of 
canal stock he couldn't recollect it. When our lawyers , 
found out that Mr. Moses couldn't be made to acknowledge 
the receipt of a bill of sale of the canal stock, they had 
Mr. J. BT Strong sworn to prove that he had seen the 
aforesaid bill of sale in Mr. Moses' possession. His . 
Honor, the J^idge, inquired what was expected to be 
proven by this witness, and on being informed, he said 
rather petulently that "he had heard enough about that 
bill of sale, and that he was satisfied from Mr. Moses' 
own testimony that he had received it." Now to most men 
this would have been a severe rebuke, but not so with 
" Moses my boy," all that seemed to set him back was 
that he could not make it stick. 

The trial dragged its slow length along pretty evenly 
until late in the fourth day, when the plaintiff seemed to 
get desperate. When it put some prominent and intelligent 
men upon the stand, whom, from their evidence, I thought 
had taken a contract to win the race for it, and from 
having no first class lawyer there of my own, actually made 
no opposition to this heavy reinforcement, and at the 
close of the trial my demoralization was complete, I 
thought "hung be the heavens with black;" those rich 
capitalists have got rights before the law that. I wouldn't 
have. 

Finally, after some months the court rendered a decision 
that in regard to the matters at issue between the plain- 
tiff and the corporation represented by myself, it could 
not be settled in that suit, and the plaintiff pay the costs; 
and that is the way the matter stands until this day. Mr. 
Charles Howard told me that soon after the decision 
would be rendered, he would come and examine the 
property and commence suit for possession, but though 
repeatedly requested by me to do so 3 he has not done it 
yet; he saying sametimes that the property was increasing 
in value every day. 

It was my intention to have the contest between the 
Settler's Company and the corporation represented by me, 
tried as soon as possible after the aforesaid decision was 
rendered, and wrote to Mr. Howard several times but re- 
ceived no answer. The case would eome up for trial in 
the February Term, 1875, and on the morning of the 
opening of the court when the. case was called, the plain- 
tiff answered "ready," but I had no lawyer to answer for 



34 



me; I spoke to a lawyer friend to have the case go over 
for a day or two, which he very kindly did. The plain- 
tiff expressed a willingness to compromise, but under 
exisiing circumstances, of course wanted things all its 
own way. 1 was tired of such treatment from small law- 
yers, and determined to compromise on the most favorable 
terms the plaintiff would offer, providing Messrs. Sanpete 
and Howard, who were then two-fifth owners in the prop- 
erty, were willing. The business manager of the Settler's 
Company, and myself agreed upon terms to suit us, and 
he telegraphed to Mr. Howard to know if he would be in 
Merced at a certain hour; he answered, yes. He and I 
went to Merced, explained the terms of the compromise 
to Mr. Howard, and that gentleman said it # r as all right, 
and the suit between the Settler's Company and the cor- 
poration represented by me was settled. 

The first person with whom I got acquainted, on 
my arrival in Centerville, seven years ago, was a boy 
about eighteen years of age, with a more than common 
good head on him; he kept a store, and I deposited my 
money with the firm, who were all good business men, 
would be considered so any place. During my long so- 
journ in that village, their office was my headquarters 
when in town. I was on very friendly terms with all of 
them, but I was, perhaps, more intimate with the first 
named young gentleman than with any other person in the 
country. He was well aware that I was displeased with 
the manner in which Mr. Sanpete had managed my law- 
suits, and when that gentleman came out for re-election to 
Congress, and had given such good satisfaction, according 
to the local democratic papers, and taking into considera- 
tion that his competitor was so heavily handicapped with 
his railroad record, I thought a wooden man could beat 
him; but somehow or other I didn't want this friend of 
mine to vote for Mr. Sanpete; not with the intention of 
beating him however, for I thought he would beat his 
competitor by thousands; I had not asked him how he 
was going to vote, but he seemed to understand intuitively 
that I didn't expect him to vote for Mr. Sanpete, and on 
the morning of the election he came to me abrnptly and 
showed me the ticket he intended to vote, straight demo- 
cratic with Mr. Sanpete's name scratched. We both 
voted the same ticket, and had much hilarity over the re- 
sult, as it is well known that the news came in for many 
days that Mr. Sanpete had lost the race by one vote . Had 
we voted for him he could have been a Congressman, and 
enjoyed "without a co-rival all his dignity." 

Since coming to San Francisco and explaining the situ- 
ation of mv case to some lawyer friends, they tell me that 1 
have forfeited my right to that property through the statute 



35 



of limitation. But I met Lawyer Sanpete on the streets 
and he condescended to assure me that they were mista- 
ken. At any rate, I did all I could to induce Mr. Chas. 
Howard to file a complaint long ago, when there could be 
no probability of losing the property on that grounds, 
the only proper grounds for losing it. And it appears to 
me that it wouldn't look well to give another lawyer two- 
fifths more, as then I would only have one-fifth left. 
Should I lose this property in this shameful manner, I 
would say, was ever so promising an enterprise squan- 
dered so ignominiously ? 

Now to cover up all these ignominious and shameful 
failures during these " twentj^ years of memory back " I 
will have to do something extraordinary. But if I can 
show that I can do for Agriculture what the "Idol of the 
World did for the Drama," it will not only cover up all 
these sad disasters, but will make them seem glorious. 
That's just what I propose now to do. I am confident I 
know how to do it as well as I know the alphabet. Our 
gentle mother Nature apparently seeing the deep ditch I 
was to fall into at the end of my long and persistent strug- 
gle, and by way of compensation for my devotion, literally 
drilled this important secret into me as I was passing along 
to where " Destruction would sicken. " 



36 



THE COMMON SENSE SOLUTION 

OF THE 

GREAT LABOR PROBLEM. 

.. — ».., 

It was the unalterable conviction formed from my for- 
mer experience and from points I had learned in listening 
reverently to the voice of nature, and from what little 
philosophy there was in me, that there were unconceiva- 
ble great results to be obtained in the domain of agricul- 
ture by bringing land and water together just right ; that 
furnished the motive power that drove me along when cut- 
ting the ditch at Walla Walla. It was the same convic- 
tion intensified that impelled me to face and cut through 
the gravel bar on the Umatilla. It was the hope to make 
money enough to finish these canals and thereby put my- 
self in a position to prove what could be done with these 
materials, that caused me to work like a beaver in the 
mines on John Day River for more than two years. 

And on coming to King's River and tackling that enter- 
prise the desire to satisfy my curiosity in that particular 
was unabated. And to gratify that desire to the utmost 
I was firmly resolved that no pains or expense should be 
spared just as soon as I would make my first important 
success, and thought I could afford to. But my expe- 
rience in the northern country had learned me a terrible 
lesson in regard to the important figure that the simple 
item of "money" cut in all enterprises, great and small. 
And on seeing the situation on King's River I knew if I 
could succeed in outgeneraling land-grabberdom, I would 
have a second Aladdin lamp to back me. 

I have heretofore recited carefully how I came to King's 
River before any one else thought of such a thing; found 
out the situation and went to work with the utmost dili- 
gence and patience, and by judiciously investing about 
four thousand dollars, the most of it, however, in lands 
that I was compelled to purchase in order to obtain a right 
of way, etc., how I had all the engineering and work clone 
necessary to send the water out about twenty miles into 
this great plain ; had applied for a large subsidy, which 
was nothing but my just due; how other parties circum- 



37 



vented me by getting possession of my property, in, I 
think, a questionable manner ; how these wealthy 
capitalists received $40,000 of a subsidy that I was by 
all laws, human and divine, justly entitled to. Now. then, 
there was no unsurmountable obstruction in the way of 
that caoal being made to pay four or five hundred dollars 
a day on an average ever since. The only obstruction was 
that the American people knew absolutely nothing about 
irrigation. The land-owners who paid the large subsidy 
supposed, as I did at Cache Creek, that as soon as the 
canal was completed that I would enhance the price of 
their land from one dollar to about thirty dollars per acre, 
and very freely put up the money. Now, if these wealthy 
land-holders (Rodin & Co.) had not run squarely contrary 
to God's law, wherein it says: " Not to muzzle the horse 
that plows the corn," wouldn't I have had a magnificent 
chance to show what could be done by bringing land and 
water together just right ? 

During my seven years sojourn in the northern country 
I couldn't imagine for the life of me, why there was such 
an irresistable attraction about working with water for 
me, and would ask myself, and others would repeatedly 
ask me, " why I would persist in wasting my time and 
spending every cent I could get hold of in the pursuit of 
something that invariably brought me into poverty, rags 
and contempt?" I often thought seriously that that mania 
must be a judgment sent upon me for having wholly pros- 
tituted my early manhood to mammon worship. I took 
particular notice of every stream I passed in that coun- 
try, and whether it was susceptible of being turned out 
on the parched plains. Would notice particularly the 
fertile spots, and what effect water had on ^plants under 
different circumstances. Employed nearly all my leisure 
time in closely observing and studying the nature of such 
things. A.nd on coming to King's River and seeing that 
irrigation, as it was then practiced, was a hopeless failure 
without there was something clone to render it practical, 
and as a natural consequence, my favorite occupation of 
cutting canals would be gone, and began to give my 
studies a practical shape. And on the termination of the 
four days law-suit, heretofore referred to, before leaving 
the court-house I made up my mind that managing law- 
suits was not my forte, and that I would go to work and 
draw up a system of irrigation that no man could ever im- 
prove upon. I felt that I was deeply disgraced in having 
come down to the valley in 1870, with five thousand dol- 
lars to capture the country and let two such looking men 
as Rodin and old Moses ' ' get away with me ;" and from 
my repeated failures I knew my reputation as a busi- 
ness man was utterly ruined, and foreseeing as clearly 
as if written in a book that the then immense desert, 



38 



yclept the great San Joaquin Valley could be converted 
into a splendid little empire, capable of sustaining sump- 
tuously five millions of people, and at some period in 
the future there would be cities built within its territory 
vying in splendor with great Babylon in its palmiest 
days. I intended this system, after it was perfected, 
should be a master-piece of art compiled from nature, 
and so extremely simple, practical and efficient, that it 
would be impossible ever afterward to shake it off. 

But it was not until sometime after completing this 
task, and I was engaged in drawing up a system of agri- 
culture to correspond with it and began to figure up 
and speculate, and clearly ascertained the tremendous re- 
sults that were to be obtained through them, that 1 dis- 
covered that I had been working at the iC one thing need- 
ful/' and that all this time I had been educating myself 
for this mighty work out of the Book of Nature. The 
supreme question of the hour, and the one that the wisest 
and best men of the age are racking their brains to solve 
is: " What is to be done with the three or four million 
of able-bodied unemployed and destitute laboring men in 
the Bepublic ? 

To govern this starving mob the papers say that Jay 
Gould wants a king, and General Sherman a large stand- 
ing army. I think the papers must be romancing. It 
is unreasonable to suppose that two men of the renown 
of the aforesaid should deliver themselves of such ab- 
surd sentiments as are here attributed to them. 

For temporary relief for these distressed people, some 
milder mannered men are advocating an extensive system 
of internal improvements to be aided financially by the 
Government. I think the country has had quite enough 
of the internal improvement subsidy dodge. A system 
that has contributed as much as any thing to the present 
embarrassing situation. The giving away under that pre- 
tense within the last fifteen years of two hundred and 
twenty millions of acres of the public domain to ras- 
cally corporations and other land-grabbing schemes is the 
crying sins of the nineteenth century, and for which these 
poor people are now suffering. 

Some harmless and well-meaning people recommend 
that libraries should be established by way of elevating 
these unfortunate people. That remedy is entirely too 
thin for destitute working men. Now no more certain am 
I that the sun is shining on yonder hill top, than I am 
that there is a natural, peaceful, permanent and most 
happy solution of this all important problem. That to 
solve which so clear-headed a patriot as Jay Gould is said 
to have wished for the desperate remedy of a king. Had 
it not have been for "the slings and arrows of outrage- 
ous fortune " showered upon me through that ill-advised 



39 



institution — land monopoly — since 1870 in Fresno county, 
the question that now overshadows all others would not 
he before the country. Had I have been allowed to, I 
would have shown that one more count in Shipton's pro- 
phecy had come true, that " water it would wonders do." 
And although " there be great men and men of renown 
that a mystery had been revealed to the Lowe-ly," I think 
it an insult to the wisdom of the Creation to imagine that 
there is no natural and peaceful remedy for the present 
state of affairs. To think that the Government of the 
United States, an institution gotten up more nearly in 
conformity with God's laws than any other designed by 
man, should be cut down through the scouridrelism of a 
few thousand bloated corporations and the rowdyism of 
three or four milliions of rebellious tramps. 

Although scoundrelism has done its level best to con- 
tribute to the present state of affairs, there is a natural 
cause that has arisen thro' honest ignoronce that contri- 
bute more to the discomfort than all other causes com- 
bined, and in correcting that it will have the effect of cor- 
recting most of the evils extant. 

Tt is the barbarous, or as I might say, the entire absence 
of system of agriculture, practiced by the American peo- 
ple, that is clogging the wheels of progress. Not that the 
implements for cultivating and harvesting crops are faulty 
or behind the times by any means, but there is some- 
thing of more importance than planting and harvesting 
crops in the most approved style. The most important 
items are how to raise the largest possible crop, with the 
greatest certainty, and with the least possible expense. If 
there had been a tithe of the capital, skill and genius 
employed in the last half century in perfecting the science 
upon which depends the production of the raw material, 
out of which food and raiment for the people could be 
manufactured, that there has been in perfecting the science 
of destroying them, the question that now overshadows all 
others, would have been settled long ago. During the last 
half a century, there has been gigantic strides in the 
improvement of the manufacture of nearly all useful arti- 
cles. For instance, in the manufacture of shoes and boots, 
dooi's and windows, and all such articles, one man's 
work with the present appliances, is made to produce 
what the labor of five men would do with the appliances of 
a half centuary ago. But in the production of the raw 
material out of which food and raiment for the people can 
be manufactured, there has been no corresponding improve- 
ment. For instance, in the production of the very neces- 
sary article of wool, as practiced by the average Califor- 
nia flock master, there is no perceptible improvement over 
flock masters in the days of the patriarch Abraham. And 
in almo 3t all agricultural products, the situation is but lit- 



40 



tie better. Through the inordinate desire for wealth 
and shoddyism, the American people have overlooked the 
most important thing in life, viz : how to make and enjoy 
a comfortable living. I would say to Los Americanos, 
"Let us leave this keen encounter of our wits, and fall 
somewhat into a slower method." Now, as agriculture is 
the oldest and simplest occupation of mankind, of course 
no one ever imagined there could be a bonanza found in that 
occupation. But there is the biggest one any where to be 
found. Since I have been prospecting for this bonanza. I 
have been one of the most lonesome of mortals. Whilst 
I knew I was searching out the most important matter 
in nature, I was unable to attract or get up any interest in 
it. I was running counter to the opinions of all mankind. 
*I thought they were the most contrary lot of people I 
ever saw. I must confess that I feel as though I have ex- 
hibited a most ' ' powerful weakness" in not having yet 
made a practical demonstration of my theory, and thereby 
averted the present calamity, which I understood so well 
how to do. All the excuse I have to offei for such dis- 
graceful weakness, is that the devil was allowed to come 
against me in Fresno County since 1870. Although 
Mother Earth has hitherto been treated with the utmost 
contempt and cruelty, it is a notorious fact, that it is to 
her we are to look for all the necessaries, comforts and 
luxuries of life. She is almost invariably approached in 
a spirit of ungrateful vandalism, as who should say, she 
owes us a living, and is entitled to nothing in return 
Now, for this monstrous evil, is the country now suffer- 
ing, more than from all others, notwithstanding it has been 
committed more from want of thought, than want of heart. 

Knowing as well as I did how to make a practical demon- 
stration, and show the world how to remedy the giant evils 
abroad in the land, it is with mingled shame and sorrow, 
that I come in at this late hour, when free institutions are 
actually menaced for want of it, with a written plan for 
people to work out their salvation by. But I think I have 
shown my faith by my work. I have used my utmost 
ability to make a practical demonstration, but through 
circumstances that I was unable to coutrol, I have been 
thwarted in all my designs. But you see, in my previous 
attempts, I have been actuated by self interest entirely, 
and was anxious in demonstrating my theory, to have it 
bring me in a fortune at the same time. Now, under the 
pressing necessities of the day, I am anxious to have it 
demonstrated and made known at all hazards; and if peo- 
ple will but listen to reason, there will be no trouble in 
doing it. And let it once become known what can be done 
with forty acres of land in the New Agriculture, it will 
force its own way easily wherever there is any attempt at 
civilization. 



41 



I don't know whether those gentlemen who invented 
the Colt's revolver, the Gatbing, the Armstrong, or the 
Krupp gun, or the iron-clad gunboat and the Henry- 
Martini rifle, which those unconceivably brave men, the 
Eussian and Ottoman soldiers are rising with such murder- 
ous effect, have wrought up the science of destroying peo- 
ple to perfection or not; but I think I can say without fear 
of contradiction that I have drawn up an original, simple, 
plain, practical plan of agriculture that cannot be improved 
upon. A system to correspond exactly in its workings 
with the form of goverment drawn up one hundred years 
ago by the illustrious founders of the Republic. 

I was at a political meeting just before the September 
election, and heard a talented young gentleman descant- 
ing upon the abuses of the times. He cited the deplorable 
condition of the laboring classes. He said starvation was 
staring them in the face ; that gaunt want was sitting at 
the hearthstone of the laborer; that the Democratic and 
Republican parties had sold out the interests of the labor- 
ing classes to monopolists, and that we all had a right to 
look to Mother Earth for the means of a livelihood. But 
as Lux & Miller owned one million acres of the best land 
in the country, and that there were thousands of men in 
the State that owned from ten thousand to twenty-five 
thousand acres of land, and that land grabbers had suc- 
ceeded in gobbling up nearly all the land fit for cultiva- 
tion in the State. That the old Declaration of Independ- 
ence did not meet the present emergency, and that we 
would have a new one which would set forth not only that 
we were entitled to the privilege of life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness, but we would also be entitled to the 
means af sustaining that life. So far as the abuses set 
forth by the speaker were concerned, I could see nothing 
to controvert. But I do not relish the idea of mutilating, 
in the slightest degree, the grand old document referred 
to, which was drawn up and signed by the wisest and 
bravest set of men in any age, and to sustain which, they 
poured out their blood like water, and their scanty 
treasures like sand. More especially, as there is a 
natural and sovereign remedy for the abuses above-men- 
tioned. 

The plan of agriculture I have drawn up, will, when put 
into operation, serve as a substantial " enabling Act" for 
that portion of the Declaration of Independence wherein 
it was considered wanting by the speaker. It has taken 
the land monopolists about twenty-eight years to gobble 
up nearly all the arable land inthe country. Pat the plan 
of agriculture I have drawn up, in force, and in less than 
half that time, they will consider themselves the most 
forlorn and dejected class of individuals in the State of 
California; and before another twenty-eight years rolls 



42 

round, one-half the lands they now hold, will have reverted 
back to the State for taxes. Now the plan of agriculture 
introduced into this continent by the Pilgrim Fathers, 
was calculated to sustain a much denser population than, 
that of the aborigines they supplanted. Now this new 
agriculture is quite as great an improvement on the 
present, as was that of the Pilgrim Fathers over that of 
the aborigines. There are few evils extant at the present 
day, that are not directly the result of natural causes, and 
are susceptible of a natural remedy. The tw r o dominant 
causes of evil .in this republic, are mal-legislarion and bar- 
barous agriculture. The illustrious signers of the Declar- 
ation of Independence, in view of the sacrifice they made 
to sustain that document, doubtless never contemplated that 
the time would ever come, when a person bearing the 
proud distinction of an American citizen, would be in- 
fluenced in the important matter of casting his vote, by a 
few drinks of whiskey, the paltry sum of $3, or chance to 
earn $4 a day in a Navy yard. Or that any man would 
ever be so ignoble as to give seventy or any number of 
thousands of dollars for a seat in the IT. S. Senate. I 
hope there is no foundation, in fact, for any such rumors, 
and may we have no cause for them in the future. I re- 
peat that had it not been for land monopoly in Fresno Co., 
and its attendant evils, I would have demonstrated long 
ago, that there was a new industry to be inaugurated 
throughout civilization; the most profitable industry 
that mankind ever engaged in. Now there is any amount 
of money in saving's banks throughout the whole length 
and breadth of the land, seeking employment at an un- 
precedented low rate of interest ; and a corresponding 
number of able-bodied, unemployed and destitute men, 
that would gladly welcome the day when they could go to 
work and earn an honest living. 

Now it is within my certain knowledge that there is an 
abundance of profitable employment in the domain of 
agriculture for all this labor and capital, and the most re- 
munerative employment to be found in any legitimate oc- 
cupation. 

I will try to illustrate by comparison, my ideas of the 
vastness of the field that is open to the laboring classes in 
the domain of agriculture, according to the new regime 
which, at present, unfortunately, but exists on paper. 

Let us suppose for a moment that in that portion of the 
Sierra Nevada Mountains that lay alongside of the great 
Valley of California, the space now occupied by granite 
bed-rock were turned into iron, and that portion now oc 
cupied by slate rock were converted into veins of steel. 
And again let us imagine that in the Coast Kange of Moun- 
tains that lay along the opposite side of the valley the 
space in those mountains occupied by the different 



43 



stratas of rock were filled with the best kind of coal for 
manufacturing purposes, and supposing that each of the 
States of the Union were equally well supplied with these 
raw materials. 

Now if such were the situation and there was great pro- 
fit to be made in converting these abundant raw materials 
into useful articles of manufacture, does it not appear that 
without an immense amount of hostile legislation, especi- 
ally in a free country like this, that the skilled laborers of 
the country would come in for the lion's share of the pro 
fits. 

Now, one of the most important discoveries I have 
made whilst experimenting with land and water is, that 
throughout the world the raw material (Land and Water) 
out of which fertile and productive farms can be manu- 
factured, are relatively just as abundant in fact as the raw 
material in the aforesaid imaginary situation is in fancy, 

I reason thus : In cultivating the raw land as now prac- 
ticed, a very small percentage of the land in the country 
is utilized. For instance, in the State of California it is 
estimated that not more than five per cent, of the land is, 
cultivated. Now, when the manufactured farm comes in 
fashion it will only require one-tenth of this five per cent, 
now being used to raise the same amount of produce. 
In the Agriculture of the near future the practice of herd- 
ing stock on the plains will be considered a relic of bar- 
barism, as it will be seen that their presence on the farm 
will be an imperative necessity. 

The new agriculture when it comes into general use, 
will have the same effect on the price of land that watering 
the stock of a mining company to the tune of ten shares 
for one would have on the price of that stock. I think in- 
creasing the productive capacity of land ten-fold through- 
out the world will have the same effect on the price of 
land as the increasing the area of the land of the world 
ten-fold would have. It is only the average land of the 
world, however, that the new agriculturists claim that 
they can increase the capacity ten-fold. Now for instance, 
such land as that in the Mussell Slough country, in Tulare 
County, California, when there is water brought upon it 
there is nearly a natural farm and reclaimed tule lands are 
wonderfully productive, and some of Billy Carr's deserts 
in Kern County, if reports are true, would be hard to "get 
away with." 

I don't think the plan I have drawn up will ever be ex- 
celled, although it is but the result of common sense, close 
observation and intense application. It is the plan that 
any person of intelligence, having the same facilties for 
collecting information that I had and used equal diligence 
would have been compelled to adopt. Because, why, it 
is the "natural plan." 



Now, my ideas in this whole business came to me in the 
most natural manner imaginable. For instancejl went to 
Cache Creek, in Yolo County, and lost my pile on ac- 
count of drought, and then began to cast about me for nat- 
ural causes. I find the most beautiful natural channels 
running out for miles on both sides of the creek on the 
highest ground, occupying the very site that irrigation 
canals ought to occupy. Now supposing the fact was es- 
tablished that irrigation was necessary, and it was pro- 
posed to cut a canal for irrigation, and the subject of pro- 
per location of the canal were under discussion, what does 
the voice of Nature say in regard to this : I think she 
gives forth no uncertain sound whatever, but plainly says, 
"occupy the canals I have made for you.'' Now, in this 
extremely simple and original plan of agriculture I have 
drawn up I have been directed just as unmistakably by 
the same high authority in every particular. But to look 
back at what has transpired since the 20th of May, 1870, 
almost upsets my previously conceived ideas in regard to 
the doctrine of the "Eternal fitness of things." There is 
nothing more clear to my mind than that our country is 
suffering more at this time from the effects of our faulty 
system (or rather entire absence of system) of agriculture 
than from all other causes combined. And from nature, 
education and desire it seems of all men I was the person 
to reform it. At that time, under the circumstances, I 
was possessed of ample means to perform the task. The 
location selected shows for itself, and will for all time, 
that a better field for such an exploit could not have been 
chosen on the planet. The law for canals and ditches 
passed the previous winter gave me all the authority I 
wanted. I thought it a precious document. I knew of 
hundreds of miles of natural channels in the great valley 
of California, which I considered worth as much to me as 
so many miles of well equipped railroad, and thought I 
was the only man on the continent in possession of the 
great secret, "that the waters of the rivers taken in con- 
nection with these natural channels were worth as much as 
the lands through which they run." I looked upon them 
all as my individual property, from the fact that nearly 
everybody looked upon irrigation as a absurd humbug. I 
thought I would let Governor Stanford, Charley Crocker, 
and others build all the railroads they wanted to at $25,- 
000 a mile, but for my part I would take the natural 
canal in mine. I had often read "that knowledge was 
power,'' and was confident that I had more knowledge of 
the business I was engaged in than all the balance of the 
American people, put them all in one corral. Why ? Be- 
cause I was a "natural water grabber" and knew I Had 
studied it more than all the balance of them, and intended to 
use my advantage to the utmost of my ability. I intended 



45 



to put myself in condition that I could say to the people 
of the great valley, in regard to the water business, what 
Napoleon III said to the French people, viz : "You at- 
tend to such matters as trade, commerce, etc., and I will 
attend to the government affairs." I thought of those two 
or three miners that located the wate.r-right in Boise basin 
heretofore referred to, and was certain I had a much better 
enterprise to back me than they had. I had a most pow- 
erful incentive to action. Here were all these hundreds 
of miles of natural canals laying loose around the country 
but I had very little fear of any one appropriating them, 
but I knew so soon as I demonstrated their immense value 
that they would soon be appropriated. 

But supposing that some man in the year 1877 had in- 
vented the most perfect locomotive that has been in use 
since that period, and written a pamphlet describing it 
particularly, at the same time claiming that it would work 
wonders, and that on some future occasion it would haul 
a train of passenger cars across the widest part of the 
American Continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 
80 hours, he would have been proclaimed a madman. And 
when I claim that the discovery that I have made will do 
more to ameliorate and elevate the condition of the labor- 
ing classes than all the discoveries of the Nineteenth 
century, stack them all up together. That it will incsease 
the productive capacity of the earth ten -fold with one- 
fifth the labor hitherto required. That it will strike a death 
blow to land monopoly. That through its agency -'The 
Desert Land Bill " will be converted into a scheme to 
plague its inventors. That through it the Commonwealth 
of England with its thirty-one million acres and twenty- 
four millions of people can be made nearly, if not quite, 
self-sustaining, and that through it the great American 
and African deserts, and the Steppes of Asia can be made 
as fertile and productive as the Polders of Holland, and 
that it will come to pass after it becomes as well under- 
stood as the railroad now is, that such people as those 
hard pressed miners in the Pennsylvania coal mines can, 
by working eight hours a day, six days in the week, earn 
money enough to supply their families with the very best 
of substantial food and raiment, and give them all the 
meat they can eat, three times a day if they want it, and 
lay by one-third of his earnings for a rainy day at that. 
And last, but not least, it will abate the intolerable tramp 
nuisance. 

Who is going to believe all this: Echo answers, No- 
body. But I am confident the items above enumerated 
will be but a modicum of the wonderful results to be ob- 
tained, simply by bringing the science of agriculture to 
perfection according to the plan I have drawn up. 



46 



Not long since I wrote a pamphlet covering the whole 
ground, showing amongst other things, that irrigation in 
the great valley of California, as a general thing, under 
the present light, al hough it might do well euough as a 
dernier resort in a dry season like the present, but that 
with the exception of a few favored localities, was but a 
delusion, a snare, and a labor without profit, showed why 
it was a failure, and before leaving the subject showed 
how to make it the very personification of success. Show- 
ed how to take a given quantity of virgin land, with the 
necessary quantity of water, and manufacture a paying 
farm; did it with great care, directing how to proceed; 
from the turning of the first sod of dirt until the farm was 
complete in all its appointments, and then described 
particularly, how to bring it by easy stages to the highest 
possible state of fertility. Also, how to operate it to the 
best advantage, showing how to adroitly bring the me- 
chanical forces of Nature into play to the utmost, and in 
the simplest possible manner, both in manufacturing the 
farm and the subsequent operating of it. 

I presented one of these pamphlets to a gentleman who, 
I believe, is recognized by common consent to be the 
ablest journalist on the Pacific Coast; a man at any rate 
of a robust mind and body, and withal takes great inter- 
est in matters agricultural. I thought if any man on the 
Coast could form a correct estimate of my theory, cer- 
tainly this gentleman could; and on my calling upon 
him a few weeks later, he said : "Lowe, don't you know 
since reading your pamphlet (The New Agriculture) that 
T have thought one hundred times that if you would go 
out to some place in the plains of California and prepare 
a farm of orty acres of land just as you have drawn up 
the plan, not omitting a single item, and show what can 
be done at this kind of farming, that it would be worth 
miliions of dollars to the State of California." 

Now between this intelligent gentleman's conception of 
it and w r hat I claim for it, there is a world-wide difference; 
but it would be, perhaps, unreasonable to look for a more 
comprehensive opinion from any man, without his first 
having studied the subject in all its bearings and ramifi- 
cations. I was reading, a short time ago, where some 
industrious statistician had been figuring up the national, 
state, county, municipal and railroad indebtedness of the 
United States, which amounted to seven billions and three 
hundred and sixty-five millions of dollars. Now according 
to my estimate, if this style of farming were as well under- 
stood as the railroad is, the aforesaid sum would not begin 
to represent the value of it to this nation. Time will de- 
monstrate that it will be an absolute necessity, an indis- 
pensable auxiliary to the great republic; as well start out 
the finest army the world ever saw, with a wholly inadequate 



47 



commissary department, why, I will be worth more than a 
a king and a large standing army to boot. Extensive manu- 
facturing is as sure to follow this system of agriculture u< 
the night follows the day. 

Had it not been for land monopoly, or had I not struck 
the most extraordinary set of land monopolists in the 
world, in the year 1870, there is nothing more clear to my 
mind than the taxable property of the great State of Cali- 
fornia would be quadruple what it now is. When I fol- 
lowed the business of driving stock across the plains, a 
business in which I was eminently successful; I made it a 
rule to let my stock feed of a morning until they were per- 
fectly satisfied, and would commence lying down, we 
would then drive them to water, and then " hitch up" and 
start for the next camp; we would let the stock take their 
own gait without urging. All the young men that drove 
loose stock would be well mounted; all they had to do was 
to ride alongside of the drove and see that the stock kept 
the road. I would generally have a couple of the smallest 
boys in the crowd take charge of a band of fifteen or twenty 
loose horses and mules, they would naturally travel much 
faster than the train would ; these youngsters would travel 
ahead of the train, and use their own discretion, and when- 
ever they came to a nice place where there was good feed 
and the train two or three miles behind, they would stop 
and let their animals feed until the train would pass them 
and perhaps get two or three miles ahead of them, and 
then they would mount and come gaily along up with their 
stock. Now managing horses in this manner is a most 
delightful occupation for a couple of ten or twelve year 
old boys, but nevertheless quite as useful. I was always 
very fond of walking and would generally take it afoot 
and stay at the hindmost part of the train and assist in 
driving the loose cattle along until lunch time- In that 
business, my greatest care and anxiety was directed to the 
cattle that were always to be found in the hindmost part 
of the drove: and in gauging my drivers, I would consider, 
not what; he big, fat young cattle that were always to be 
found marching up near the front, could stand, but it was 
what these hindmost cattle could endure. (Now I always 
thought that it was very plain that the duty of the legisla- 
tors of the country was to devote the most of their care 
and anxiety to those people, who are always from some 
reason or other, found hindmost in the race of life, I 
always notice that "statesmen" do.) At noon-time we 
would stop just long enough for the men to eat their 
lunch, the boys who had charge of the horses, would of 
course be "always around at lunch time." I would then 
saddle up one of the best horses or mules, and mount 
him with spurs, and sail out literally on the wings of the 
wind, for the best camping ground to be found anywhere 



48 



within the next ten or fifteen miles, but if I found a good 
camp within two or three miles I would stop, but if not, I 
was bound to go until I could find one, if it was fifteen 
miles. Now the business I was then following was both 
remunerative and attractive to me, and the young men I 
had with me, seeing me work so hard and saying so little 
authoritatively to them, and withal managing everything 
so skillfully, that each and every one of them seemed to 
be inspired with the idea, that on his individual exertions 
alone, depended the safe conduct of everything; and I 
often thought, from the energy and care displayed, that 
they would be compelled to stop and study for a moment 
to know that the train didn't belong to them. Perhaps I 
was lucky in ^retting such a fine lot of young men, but 
I think it is simply the nature of nine-tenths of young 
humanity, and would develop itself under similar circum- 
stances in all cases. Now as the business I was then 
following was very attractive to me, the business I started 
into on King's Biver was perfectly enrapturing to me; "day- 
time and night-time I was thinking about it," and but for 
the institution of land monopoly, what a splendid field was 
there. Although I had to run through an almost irreclaim- 
able depert for fifty miles before I could strike irrigable 
land, and would have been compelled to stop and solve 
the problem of how to prepare land for irrigation before 
I could get through it, I have no idea that I would have 
lost much time through that, as I came there pretty well 
prepared 'to grapple with that difficulty, as that was and 
had been my favorite study for a long time. That was 
my pastime; my main idea would have been to solve that 
problem and then overrun the whole country with it as 
fast as possible. To have covered the land with fatness 
from Upper King's River, in Fresno County, to Antioch, 
in Contra Costa Connty, a distance of two hundred miles, 
in the shortest time imaginable. I am confident that with 
the terrible earnestness, energy and skill that I took to 
that enterprise, that I would have inspired every man, 
woman and child over eight years of age, that I would 
have succeeded in planting there, with the idea that much 
depended on there individual efforts to carry out the 
grand idea, and but look back and contemplate what a 
splendid lot of people have come over on the cars to look 
for homes since that period — the flower of American people 
— most of them finding the land held by speculators at 
high prices, returned to the East in disgust. Why, it is 
formidable to think of; if it hadn't been for landgrabber- 
dom, every one of those good people I would have gotten 
hold of, I would not only have made them stay, but made 
them send for all of their relations, and would undoubtedly 
have made it my business to get hold of them; it would 
have been quite as easy a task for me to have extended my 



49 



canals along down through the ' west side" country to 
Antioch, as it was for those two or three miners in Boise 
Basin, hitherto described, to extend their mining ditches 
through the mining lands hitherto referred to, and the re- 
sult w r ould have been that in the year a. d. 1877, instead 
of the meagre exports to European markets, the amount 
of exports would actually have been without a limit, and 
the fact would have been demonstrated that it would 
have taken a much drier season than this, to effect in the 
slightest degree, the amount of produce raised. 

At this writing, September, i877 ; the great San Joaquin 
valley is prostrate from the effects of the drought; bank- 
ruptcy, ruin and desolation are reigning supreme; many 
families have not even the actual necessaries of life, and 
at the same time with resources capable of sustaining five 
millions of people this season, providing they were utilized. 
Had these resources been availed of, there is no natural 
cause why this should not have been a first cJass crop 
year. Now r the gooa people of California have but to 
thank the institution their legislators have taken so much 
pains to foster for this state of affairs, and that institution 
of course is land monopoly. Now you see your well 
regulated landgrabber glories in the peaceable immigrant 
or inexperienced California!! that is verdant enough to go 
down there and pay fifty dollars an acre for land, not 
actually worth one dollar; but let an enterprising man go 
there with a few thousand dollars, and withal considerable 
originality, and undertake to set up for a great man on 
his ow r n account, and divide up the country with them. 
They have no use for such men; the fifty dollars per acre 
is all they want. 



THE GREAT SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, 



As it was the birth-place of the new agriculture, so is it 
to be the cradle. Why ? For the best of reasons — it is 
an absolute necessity. Let us examine the situation in 
that valley for a moment. 

The situation there is a subject of much diversity of 
opinion. Many intelligent gentlemen who have lived there 
since the first settlement, and in the good old days when 
the cattle kings ruled, deplore the no fence law T , and say 
that it has been the ruin of the country, and that prosperity 
will not return until that law 7 is repealed, and the country 
remanded back to its former occupants. They say that 
twenty dollar pieces were as plentiful then as four bit 
pieces are now. They point out that those who attempted 
to farm without water, made a signal failure; that they 



50 



not only bankrupted themselves, but have crippled the 
merchant?; and that irrigation, with the exception of two or 
three fa\ ored localities, is a hopeless failure, only kept alive 
at an enormous expense; that a few colony sharps may sell 
twenty acre lots, realty worth one dollar an acre, for fifty 
dollars per acre, to deluded new comers. Many intelligent 
gentlemen of my acquaintance, whose opinions, in ordinary 
affairs, I would value highly, who have visited that valley 
and traveled all Ihrnugh. it, do not hesitate to tell me that 
the people now settled on ihe ordinary plain land (which 
kind of land embraces nine-tenths of the area of the valley), 
will efther emigrate or starve. That all the country is fit 
for is to rear mustang horses and wild cattle in; and that 
a quarter of a century hence, will find less population 
there by one-half than there is to-day. 

1 respectfully beg leave to differ widely with the afore- 
said gentlemen. My opinion of the situation in regard to 
that valley, is the same that I have expressed; I know T not 
how often, to my amiable young friend, Sigismund Frank- 
enau (who, in company with his brother, Max, kept a large 
store at Centreviiie, during much of the time I lived 
there, and were as kind as brothers to me), that that 
country was either good for a high state of cultivation, 
based upon the judicious use of water, or good for nothing. 
That nature had furnished the raw materials (land and 
water), out of which the most fertile and productive farms 
under the sun, could be manufactured in the utmost pro- 
fusion; but that the first thing a farmer had to do, was to 
manufacture his farm, and that it was madness and folly 
for a farmer to take one hundred, or any other number of 
acres of land, either with or without water in its natural 
state, and attempt to farm with any degree of success, 
without that process. Now the region of country that I 
made the attempt to run water onto in 1870, and the plain 
upon which Centreviiie is situated on the eastern edge of, 
and the particular tract referred to in speaking to young 
Frankenan, is rather below the average of the land of the 
valley. 

It is as uninviting and irreclaimable a looking desert 
waste as there is in creation, being, in its natural state, 
utterly incapable of profitable irrigation. I was peculiarly 
situated there. I knew I was the rightful owner of the 
grand canal that conveyed water out into the center of 
the great plain, near where Fresno station now is, and 
confidently expected to come into possession of it, sooner 
or later, and knew there was no legitimate use I could put 
it to to pay expenses, providing I had the possession 
turned over to me peaceably. (I don't look upon using it, 
enforcing large subsidies out of people, quite the regular 
thing.) For who would bay my water at any price, if they 
could not make it profitable. It is the unanimous voice 



51 



of the farmers in that neighborhood, that it will never pay 
to raise small grain through irrigation. I knew if that 
were the case, that my " occupation would be gone," and 
I would have to bid farewell to all my grand canals. 
*' That made ambition virtue." And it would have done 
too much violence to my nature, had 1 have come into 
possession of it, to have run it in this colony business, 
wherein I would have had to depend for my profits, by 
deluding needle women that burn the midnight oil for 
their hard earnings, and schoolmarms who earn their 
money equally hard, together with inexperienced immi- 
rants, and simple minded bootblacks and hotel waiters. 

think such people should be considered by all well reg- 
ulated speculators, as " non-combatants." Therefore, the 
solution of the problem of how to prepare land for 
scientific irrigation, was an absolute necessity for me. To 
the question, <c what is this ordinary plain land of the 
San Joaquin Valley really worth ?" I would say that this 
land is really w r orth a settlers taking of it up and improv- 
ing, and no more; and that the water is just worth the 
cost of appropriating, and no more. Anyone who has to 
pay any more than that, just contributes so much as his 
proportion for payment for mal-legislation. For the 
reason that California has one hundred million acres of 
land, thirty-five millions of this is susceptible of being 
manufactured into as fertile farms as the sun shines on; 
and with the present sparse population, there are not farm 
laborers (outside of the Chinese) to cultivate more than 
one million acres, according to the new agriculture, the 
only system that can be made profitable. 

As aforesaid, when the new agriculture comes into use, 
grazing stock on the plains will be a thing of the past, as 
they will more than pay their cost of keeping on the farm 
by increasing its productive capacity. 

Then millions of acres hitherto considered worth $2 50 
per acre for sheep grazing will be idle, and no value for 
that purpose. Now when the new agriculturists get hold 
and utilize one million acres of this thirty-five million, the 
remainder will be surplus until an increase of population, 
and perhaps a decade will have elapsed before another 
million acres would be required. Now just so soon as the 
situation is understood perfectly, land monopoly will fall 
deader than Julius Casser. Now there is just as much of 
a surplus of water as there is of land, and the reason I 
took so much care in describing how I could shut out op- 
position in the early part of this writing was for the pur- 
pose of showing up water monopoly in all its deformity, 
with the sincere hope that it would be abolished. 

Whether I ever succeed in getting possession of my 
grand canal in Fresno County or not, for the good of the 
country I hope the legislature will pass a law allowing dis- 



52 



tricts to condemn all canals, ditches and water rights. With 
water, air, and sunlight declared and made common to 
all and not subject to monopoly, and people go to scien- 
tific farming. The only kind of farming that the great 
San Joaquin Valley will admit of, then may we look for 
unexampled prosperity, not only in California, but 
throughout the world. 

Now, when the American people see that the manufac- 
tured farms are quite as much of an improvement on the 
old plan of farming as the splendid sulky plow now in use 
on this coast is superior to the forked stick used by the 
ancient Egyptians for a plow, and that their manufacture 
is so simple and within the reach of all, will they not 
strain every nerve to avail themselves of their great ad- 
vantages. "I should say so." Had I only have been 
lucky enough to have started into the business six or 
seven years ago, there would now be employment at home 
for every idle laborer in the United States, for be it known 
that these farms are quite as much of a necessity for New 
York, Pennsylvania or Missouri, as they are for the great 
San Joaquin Valley. Now, under this system of farming, 
the Island of New Foundland, which is now on account of its 
rigorous climate, almost uninhabitable, could be converted 
into a splendid wheat growing country, but it is an impene- 
trable mystery to me, with my peculiar belief in certain doc- 
trines ; why I, having such a gorgeous opportunity in 1870 
to give reasons for the faith that was in me, and so good 
a chance to make known the one thing that of all else at 
this time is most needed should have been "cut down." 
The right time was chosen, the right place selected, the 
right man was there fully equipped for this good work, but 
"The Devil came also." But to these good people in 
the great San Joaquin Valley who are now destitute of the 
actual necesaries of life, to these thousands of destitute 
men and women in San Francisco, many of whom in their 
struggle against starvation, hunt over manure piles for 
garbage cast out of restaurants and market places, and to 
the millions of unemployed and destitute laborers in these 
United States at whose hearthstones gaunt want sits as a 
constant guest, rendering life intolerable to them, for 
whose misfortunes I could, and would, had certain peo- 
ple acted nobly brought forth a soverign and permanent 
relief. I can say with Macbeth : 

" Thou can'st not sa}^ I did it, 
Never shake thy gory locks at me." 

But it may seem somewhat anomalous when I say that 
legitimate agriculture is the most profitable occupation in 
California or elsewhere. That supposing that stock and 
farm produce of all kinds at the average price obtained 
within the last seven years can be produced, through the new 



53 



agriculture at of a profit of sis per cent, per month net 
for all the money invested in it, and in the same breath 
say that average lands in the great San Joaqnin Yalley are 
not worth a cent more in reality than the cost of locating 
and improving them, and that the water is not worth any 
more than the actual cost of appropriation. I reason 
from the natural law of supply and demand, and when we 
are known to have thirty-rive millions of acres of cultiva- 
ble land, and a population so sparse that we cannofc possi- 
bly cultivate more than one million of acres in a manner to 
reap the greatest profit, and that two in the most simple 
and common sense manner. Now, with this great prepon- 
derance of the supply to the meagre demand, how in the 
name of all that is reasonable, can land be really worth 
any more than I have said. Admitting that at present 
nine-tenths of the best land of the country is in the hands 
of speculators, and that we are all, as we should be, stick- 
lers for law and order, we believe that the " soul of lib- 
erty is the love of law." But when people who wish to 
embark in legitimate agriculture get hold of the small 
quantity actually necessary, then will life become a bur- 
den to all land grabbers. For 1 know by experienc8 that 
to be " land poor" is the most abject poverty. There- 
fore I would say to all people after having spent all my 
earnings for twenty-eight years on this coast, and twenty 
years experimenting with land and water, that while I am 
certain that legitimate agriculture is the most profitable 
business there is offered at the present time to embark in, 
not to buy an acre of land more than they have actual 
use for. For when this new agriculture, this absolute ne- 
cessity of the age, becomes fully understood and appreci- 
ated throughout the whole length and breadth of the land 
under the most favorable conditions for increase of popu- 
lation imaginable, it will take at least eleven centuries for 
these land-grabbers to get their "second wind." But I 
sincerely hope and trust that the American people will 
steadfastly oppose to the bitter . end any aopropriation of 
air, sunlight or water by monopolies, and I would say 
to any talented young man, who is aspiring for high pub- 
lic honors, that if he w r ill go to work in dead earnest, dig 
up the law in relation to these three most necessary ele- 
ments to the bed-rock, and have the laws so amended that 
these three articles can never be made subject to monop- 
olies, hurt forever to remain the common property of all, 
that he will be deserving of the highest honors the Amer- 
ican people can bestow upon him. Now, whatever con- 
tributes to the prosperity of the farmers of the great San 
Joaquin valley contributes equally to the prosperity of 
the citizen of the metropolis of this coast. With these 
three elements free to all, land monopoly can offer but 



54 



feeble resistance to progress henceforth, as the new agri- 
culture will drive it out as surely as the sun dispels dark- 
ness. 

Now the people who will he most directly benefitted by 
this New Agriculture are those three or four millions of 
destitute and unemployed laborers, aud those people who 
are suffering the pangs of hunger, and those who are at 
this time hindmost in the race of life; but it will indi- 
rectly benefit all, from the boot-black in San Francisco, 
to the ten millionaire. For instance, the Great Valley of 
California has ten millions of acres of land, and is an im- 
portant tributary to the commercial greatness of metropolis 
of the Coast under the present order of things; but inau- 
gurate legitimate agriculture — the agriculture of civiliza- 
tion, and its producting and life sustaining capacity would 
be increased ten-fold; which would for all good intents and 
purposes be equal to magnifying its area up to that of a 
tributary of one hundred millions of acres; with the great- 
additional advantage we have it condensed, is more 
easily held " well in hand." 

It will be of incalculable benefit to all those who love 
their fellow man, for then poverty and destitution will 
be unknown except with the idle, dissolute and vicious. 

Another of one hundred important items I will mention. 
We will hear no more of this everlasting cry of failure of 
crops from the cause of drought. When it becomes known 
and in general use, the wonder (the supreme wonder) will 
be, why so simple and efficient a plan should not have been 
thought of years ago. The new agriculture is as well cal- 
culated for a wet season as a dry one, as most efficient 
drainage is amply provided for. 

Now the parties who have possession of a certain canal 
in Fresno County, who are doing their level best to sell 
land off at fifty dollars an acre whilst they have possession 
of it, try to make people believe that to run the water out 
there cost several hundred thousand dollars; and would 
also try and make them believe, that what they have in 
possession is about all the land and water that can be got 
together in the great San Joaquin Valle} . It is false in 
every particular. All the w^oj k that has been done on the 
main portion of it has not cost more than twenty thou- 
sand dollars; and every locality in the valley can very 
easily have quite as good a supply; not with so little ex- 
pense however; but the expense of getting out water will 
be but a bagatelle if they go to work systematically in any 
portion of the valley. I repeat that there is just as great 
a surplus of water ia that valley as there is of land throagh- 
out its length and breadth. There is land and water 
enough south of Stockton were it utilized in a proper man- 
ner, to support five million of people sumptuously; and 
with a present population of thirty or forty thoasand — by 



55 



the guess— you cant find a desert there but what you can 
find an equal amount of water to match; but if you go 
there with any other idea, than when you become the owner 
of 160 or any- number of acres of the ordinary plain 
lands with a corresponding amount of water, that you have 
anything more than the raw materials which the most 
fertile and productive farm under the sun can be manufac- 
tured, you are liable to come to grief. 

In this pamphlet and the New Agriculture, I have made 
no pretention nor do I claim ary skill in writing, but I 
have tried my utmost to elucidate in the plainest and most 
unmistakable manner, facts of the utmost importance to 
the industrial and laboring classes. My experience in land 
and water has been a costly lesson to me, and I hope it 
will not be lost. But with the exception of a few matters of 
trifling import which will be apparent to all, (for instance, 
placing of the engine in manufacturing the farm, and the 
amount of water used.) All the advice I have given in 
these all important land and water matters, I have given 
it just as advisedly and with equal good intentions that 
I advised my young men one quarter of a century ago, on 
the steamer Timour, wherein I asked them to avoid those 
three card monte sharps. You see, at that time I had 
been to California, and had seen thousands of simple ones 
fleeced by the game those ' ' Boosters " were playing, and 
now at this time I have just completed 20 years service in 
this land and water business; and if peradventure I loose 
my grand canal, I will have come out at the little end of 
the horn; but it will be seen that through danger and hard- 
ship, I have paved the way for safety, comfort and pro- 
gress for the human family. 

ST. LOUIS, MIS80UKL 

At the age of ten years I was transplanted from a farm 
in St. Louis Co., Mo., to the Mound city, to live in the 
family of my brother, John Lowe, for the purpose of going 
to school, he being the oldest of a large family and I the 
youngest. I thought the change would surely kill me. I 
loved the farm and despised the city. Sitting Bull or 
Nez Perces Joseph couldn't have been more unhappy had 
they have been torn from their native wilds, at the same 
age, and placed in a cit} 7 to go to school, under similar 
circumstances. That being the first time I had ever en- 
tered a city, I had very strange ideas of things in general, 
and would ask exceeding strange questions. It was an 
impenetrable mystery to me, how so many people could 
make a living there. 

My brother being an active and well-to-do business 
man, and, of course, had many friends in the city to whom 
he would laugh, and tell about what refreshing ideas I 



- 



56 

had of things. Consequently, many of them came to the 
house to interview me. I guess most of them left with 
the idea that I was as irreclaimable a young barbarian as. 
ever was sent from home to school, in any country. But 
my brother and his family took up the idea that there was 
metal in me, and went to work vigorously to have it ex- 
tracted; and if ever there were a well-intentioned lot of 
people wasted splendid energies, it was my brother and 
his household. Their patience seemed to be absolutely 
inexhaustible. I had a great deal of love and regard for 
ray brother and his family, and would try to please them, 
but going to school had no attractions for me; I couldn't 
get up any interest in it. When I got as far along as the 
latin grammar, and was able to translate some of Esop's 
Fables, I would work sometimes with considerable interest 
until I could see the " point." I thought that was all 
that was required. But during the six or seven years I 
remained with them, I never went to school a day because 
I liked to. Towards the latter part of my stay in my 
brother's family, I took up the idea that making money 
was the principle aim in life. And when I got to driving 
cattle across the plains, and making money fast, I thought 
it would please my brother and his wife, the two persons 
of all others, with the exception of my mother, I would 
like to please to the echo. They were, undoubtedly, 
highly pleased at my success. But when I would go to 
their house, and be using the slang phrases I had picked 
up in California, and they saw that making money was 
my ultimatum, they didn't seem to think that they had 
struck it so very big, in what they had done for me, after 
all. They seemed to think there was higher aims in life 
than making money, and gave me to understand as much. 
But they seemed to be pretty well satisfied that I had 
turned out even as well as I had, as they were satisfied 
there was no lack of energy in my movements. 

But it was not until after I was broken in fortune, and 
was vagabondizing around the northern country, some- 
times with my blankets on my back, working a couple of 
weeks on a farm here, and a couple of months chopping 
wood there, and spending every cent I could get on water 
ditches, and turning them to no profit, that I began to 
recollect, with sorrow, the much good advice I had disre- 
garded. Then it was that I appreciated the good taste 
and judgment of my brother and his wife, when they said 
that there were other aims in life besides making money. 
Then it was that I appreciated the proverb of the great 
King Solomon, when he said that " An idle boy brings 
shame to his best friends/' I thought when he wrote 
that, ho must certainly have had my case in view, for I 
thought it fit my case exactly. I thought 1 had even lost 
the sordid art of making money. 



57 



But the country still lives, thanks to the Creator, and is 
likely to. And, unconsciously, it would have been utterly 
impossible for me to have employed my time to any 
greater advantage than I was then doing. I was working 
myself up to my fullest capacity on the one thing needful, 
and the very thing I was best calculated for by nature 
and desire to accomplish; and could have occupied no 
position in life wherein I could have learned faster. 

At this time, perhaps more than at any period of the 
world's history, the thinking portion of the laboring 
classes are contemplating the future with despair, at the 
prospect of being driven to the wall, through the concen- 
tration of capital in the hands of gigantic corporations, 
and in legislation inimical to their interests, and in favor 
of scheming monopolists. If there ever was a period 
when the monopolists had the people literally by the 
throat, it certainly is at this time. Land monopoly has 
done its worst; has culminated in the desert land bill." 

But it is as clear to me as sunshine, that what I have 
wrought and have made so many desperate attempts to 
demonstrate, when I do get it into operation, that it will 
kill land monopoly so dead, that it will, in its fall, like 
blind Sampson, pull down the pillars that support all 
monopolies. Monopoly is a tree that has borne evil fruit. 
It has sinned, and like all sinners, must perish. I know 
very well how to go to work to make the wedge that will 
open it to its mighty heart. Will do it easily, gracefully, 
lawfully and scientifically. You see so soon as the great 
leveling machine goes to work and demonstrates what it 
can do, and its effects are fully understood, land monopoly 
dies. Then there is an inexhaustible field for all to enter 
and obtain a competency. 

With competency comes leisure, with leisure comes 
thought, and with thought comes progress and enlighten- 
ment; and with a combination of all these blessings, 
tyranny and oppression must go to the wall; their down- 
fall will be inevitable . 



What Suggested the Idea of the Farm of Civilization, 

Are there not many things in nature that are strikingly 
suggestive of some of our most useful works of art; for 
instance, the eagle's eye is strongly suggestive of the 
telescope; the Behemoth or one-horned Rhinoceros — 
His bones are as strong pieces of brass. 
His bones are like bars of iron. — Job XL, v. 8. 

Does he not forcibly remind us of an ironclad gun-boat 
or steam ram, those most powerful and effective engines 
of naval warfare; and when these farms of civilization 
come in fashion, and after seeing one of them after it has 



.58 

been well managed for three years, and one would then 
go up into the high Sierras in midsummer and behold 
one of those most luxuriant mountain meadows wherein 
great nature is wont to show off her wonderful productive 
capacity in the highest degree of perfection. One would 
detect instantly where the idea of the farm of civilization 
originated. Now these farms of civilization can be manu- 
factured in the midst of any desert waste though the soil 
be never so rebellious, wherever the necessary amount of 
water can be obtained, (and where the desert where water 
cannot be obtained). Eun me the water of the Truckee out 
on to the Humboldt Desert to the Hot Springs, where 
more refractory and rebellious soil does not exist anywhere 
in creation, and I will manufacture you as productive a 
farm as the sun shines upon; show you how to put Mother 
Earth in a melting mood and mould her into any shape, 
and then by running clear water over the soil, ' 'purge it 
to a sound and pristine health." Then how to bring it up 
according to nature's plan, into the highest possible 
state of fertility, until you have the farm of civilization 
wherein one man's labor in it will produce that of five 
men under the old plan of this new agriculture, this agri- 
culture of civilization. The world has seen nothing and 
knows nothing of its requirements, but I will say this for 
it, that through its agency; before the nineteenth century 
' 'shuffles off its mortal coil, "agriculture will be considered 
a fine art; it will show that not only cupidity, but the 
lofty sentiment of patriotism will appeal loudly to the 
farmer to work his land up to its fullest capacity. 

It will astonish mankind when it is clearly ascertained 
that the present unpleasant, and seemingly inextricable 
predicament of the laboring classes is due more to good 
old honest ignorance of the simple art of agriculture than 
to all other causes combined. Demagoguery will be un- 
willing to acknowledge it. There is but little use now to 
rail against land monopoly, of course it is patriotic and 
kind of newspapers and all mankind to try and save what 
few acres have not been gobbled up, on the outskirts; but 
the water is where the living fight of the present is to be 
made. 

While the infamous Desert Land Bill was before Con- 
gress, when it c:uld be strangled by the feeblest jour- 
nal on the coast, so open and palpable was the monstro- 
sity of it, I never heard a howl from any of them, but like 
Sir John Falstaff, "when everything is ended then you 
come." Now the living water is the live question of the 
day. Let us see who will champion the settler on a live 
question. The water carries the land with it. Although 
it is absolutely only worth the cost of appropriation, yet 
your water monopolist, if allowed to, can impede the pro- 
gress of the settler wonderfully. 



59 



But the large minded man, whatever his occupation 
may be, if his attention be called to it, cannot fail to real- 
ize the truth of the assertion, that it is to Mother Earth 
we are to look for the natural solution of this labor prob- 
lem. It is to the interest of every member of society 
from the ten millionaire to the victim of enforced idleness 
and consequent destitution, that this problem should be 
most speedily solved. I have done what I could towards 
it heretofore, and intend to do all I can hereafter. I have 
got far enough long to know what it is necessary to be 
done for a most happy solution of it, and how to do it in 
simplest manner, but from circumstances which I have 
been unable to control, and have herein tried to explain, 
I have been unable to make a practicable demonstration, 
that which of all else was the correct thing to do. Al- 
though the manufacture of these farms are very simple, 
requiring little more ability than is required in threshing 
a crop of grain in the most approved style. Yet it requires 
heavy and costly machinery, not more costly, however, 
than a first-class threshing machine. 

Some writers say that the science of creating wealth is but 
another name for making other people have less, but not so 
with the great leveling machine, whilst it will hammer out 
a royal road to competency for all those that are hind- 
most in the race of life, I cannot see wherein it will take 
from the wealthy class, with the exception of land and 
water monopolists. Experience has taught me that those 
two are "unnatural occupations," and that nature never 
intended that land, water, air or sunshine should ever be- 
come subject to monopoly. I would have it distinctly 
understood that I am in no sense in favor of agrarian or 
communistic doctrine, but if the institution of land monop- 
oly cannot withstand the test of natural science, I am 
decidedly in favor of letting it slide." And I am positive 
it cannot, and as it is the keystone to the arch that sup- 
ports all monopolies, take it out and the whole fabric falls, 

San Francisco t October, 1877. 



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